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By  LYMAN  P.  POWELL 


The  Emmanuel  Movement 
The  Art  of  Natural  Sleep 
Christian  Science 


ST.   JOHN'S   CHURCH,   NORTHAMPTON,   MASS. 
Photograph  by  Katherine  E.  McClellan. 


The 


Emmanuel  Movement 
in  a  New  England  Town 

A   Systematic    Account  of  Experiments  and   Reflections 

Designed  to  Determine  the   Proper  Relationship 

between  the  Minister  and  the  Doctor  in  the 

Light  of  Modern  Needs 

By 

Lyman  P.  Powell 

Rector  of  St.  John's  Church,  Northampton,  Mass.; 

Author  of  "  Christian  Science  :  The  Faith  and  Its  Founder,"  and  "  Tb« 

Art  of  Natural  Sleep  "  ;  and  Editor  of  "  Historic  Towns 

of  the  United  States  " 


Illustrated 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

3be  fmicfeerbocher  press 

1909 


Copyright,  1909 


LYMAN  P.  POWELL 


tTbe  ftnfclterbocfcer  press,  Hew  Votk 


To 
ST.  JOHN'S  CHURCH 

WHOSE    COMMUNICANTS  AND  CONGREGATIONS   HAVE  SHOWN 

ME   MUCH   CONSIDERATION   IN   THE   CONDUCT  OF   AN 

EXPERIMENT  OF  MORE  THAN  LOCAL 

INTEREST 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  the  third  in  a  trilogy  of 
related  books  which  I  have  pub- 
lished in  the  last  two  years.  The  first, 
Christian  Science,  was  written  with  the 
purpose  of  setting  forth  the  merits  and 
demerits  of  a  cult  which  is  attracting  wide 
attention,  and  incidentally  to  make  clear 
the  principle  of  suggestion,  re-enforced 
by  a  novel  faith,  which  Christian  Scien- 
tists employ,  without  admitting  it,  in  all 
their  healing  efforts. 

The  second,  entitled  The  Art  of  Natural 
Sleep,  was  the  outgrowth  of  a  year's  ex- 
perience in  the  successful  application  to 
the  cure  of  sleeplessness,  of  the  principle 
of  suggestion,  re-enforced  by  the  historic 
Christian  faith  common  to  all  branches  of 
the  Christian  Church,  in  cases  due  to  psy- 
chical rather  than  to  physical  causes;  it 
was  designed  by  the  author  to  be  so  defi- 


vi  Preface 

nite  in  its  statements  and  so  comprehen- 
sive in  its  facts  as  to  prove  conclusive  in 
its  arguments. 

The  present  volume  has  two  ends  in 
view: 

i.  To  show  the  possibilities  of  the 
principle  applied  in  Northampton  to  a 
wide  range  of  cases  of  so-called  nervous 
functional  disorders. 

2.  To  indicate  that  far  wider  reach  of 
the  whole  Emmanuel  movement  which  in 
one  way  or  another  is  destined,  I  be- 
lieve, to  re-energise  the  entire  Christian 
Church  and  to  make  it  more  useful  to 
society. 

There  were  various  reasons  why  this 
book  seemed  to  me  to  be  called  for: 

i.  It  was  needed  to  complete  the 
trilogy.  The  specific  claims  made  in 
the  two  earlier  volumes  as  to  the  uni- 
versal availability  of  the  principle  of 
suggestion  for  Christians  of  every  fold 
as  well  as  for  the  Christian  Scientists, 
could  be  maintained  only  by  a  demon- 
stration covering  a  large  field.  Allowing 
as  liberally  as  one  may  for  unintentional 


Preface  vii 

exaggerations,  errors,  failures,  and  re- 
lapses, the  reader  of  this  volume  will,  I 
am  persuaded,  be  convinced  that  all 
the  good  which  Christian  Science,  New 
Thought,  and  various  other  cults  are  to- 
day offering  can  be  obtained  without 
renunciation  of  the  specific  faith  one 
holds,  whether  Catholic  or  Protestant. 
2.  Religion  and  Medicine,  an  epoch- 
making  book  if  ever  there  was  one, 
needs  to  be  supplemented.  In  spite  of 
the  clear  statement  therein  found  of  the 
Emmanuel  principles,  there  are  in  the 
book  some  terms  and  concepts  un- 
familiar to  lay  minds.  A  book,  based 
upon  Emmanuel  principles  and  yet  practi- 
cally free  from  scientific  terminology, 
ought  to  carry  the  good  news  of  "God 
with  us"  to  many  who  may  not  yet  have 
heard  it.  Dr.  Worcester  and  Dr.  Mc- 
Comb  are  of  course  fully  competent  to 
speak  for  themselves  again  as  they  have 
convincingly  spoken  in  Religion  and 
Medicine  and  they  have  no  responsibility 
of  any  sort  for  this  volume;  but  there 
would  seem  to  be  a  place  for  a  book 


viii  Preface 

based  upon  a  clinical  experience  some- 
what different  from  theirs  and  written 
by  another  hand.  It  will,  at  any  rate, 
serve  to  show  the  flexibility  of  Em- 
manuel methods  and  the  possibility  of 
Emmanuel  results  outside  of  Boston. 

3.  Ministers  everywhere  are  wonder- 
ing whether  back  of  the  Emmanuel  heal- 
ing scheme  there  may  not  be  some  ideas 
which  can  be  made  use  of  in  the  ordinary 
ministrations  of  a  clergyman,  whether 
he  be  technically  trained  in  psycho- 
therapy or  not.  Nothing  has  brought 
me  more  amazement  this  year  past  than 
the  discovery  that,  apart  from  the  specific 
healing  of  the  sick,  there  are  many 
things  a  minister  can  learn  to  do1  with 
more  effectiveness  when  once  he  has 
made  the  Emmanuel  idea  his.  Some  of 
these  things  have  been  suggested  in  the 
closing  chapter  of  the  book.  But  all 
through  the  book  there  are  glimpses, 
I  trust,  of  that  closer  union  between 
minister  and  people,  and  also  between 
minister  and  doctor  which,  apart  from 
any  class  or  clinic,  is  sure  to  enhance  the 


Preface  ix 

usefulness  of  any  minister  who  brings 
to  a  study  of  the  movement  a  spirit  free 
from  bias  and  from  bitterness. 

When  I  began  to  write  the  book,  I  had 
some  thought  of  replying  to  the  criticisms 
— for  they  can  all  be  answered — of  the 
ministers  and  the  doctors  who  have 
written  or  spoken  recently  against  the 
movement.  But  long  before  I  finished 
the  last  chapter  it  became  evident  to 
me  that  time  will  answer  every  question 
which  is  entitled  to  a  reply. 

The  chief  criticisms  of  the  ministers 
are  based  on  misconceptions  of  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  the  Emmanuel  idea. 
The  criticisms  of  the  doctors  spring  either 
from  lack  of  specific  information  about 
psychotherapy  in  general  as  it  has  de- 
veloped within  the  last  ten  years  in 
Europe  or  from  misapprehension  natu- 
rally to  be  expected  as  to  the  Emmanuel 
movement  in  its  larger  implications. 
While  not  all  the  doctors  in  Northampton 
believe  in  the  Emmanuel  movement  in 
general,  I  have  had  from  them  the  ut- 
most consideration  and  many  of  them  are 


x  Preface 

co-operating  with  me  in  every  detail  of  an 
experiment  which  has  already  brought 
about  in  Western  Massachusetts  such  a 
relationship  between  the  minister  and 
doctor  as  did  not  before  exist  and  has 
made  each  useful  to  the  other  to  the 
profit  of  the  public. 

To  many  others  I  am  under  nameless 
obligations.  Not  only  have  a  numder  of 
my  patients  been  willing  I  should  cite 
their  cases  in  the  interest  of  science;  some 
also  have  seen  the  larger  service  to 
humanity  that  may  be  rendered  by  such 
testimony  as  is  found  in  the  pages  of  this 
book  to  the  power  of  the  mind  spiritu- 
alised to  control  the  body  and  to  drive 
away  certain  of  its  ills. 

The  editors  of  The  Ladies1  Home  Jour- 
nal, Good  Housekeeping,  The  Congregation- 
alist,  and  Psychotherapy  have  courteously 
permitted  me  to  reprint  in  certain  of 
the  chapters  passages,  though  usually 
revised,  of  articles  of  mine,  which  have 
appeared  in  their  respective  journals. 
The  larger  part  of  Chapter  I  appeared  in 
The  Ladies'  Home   Journal,  November, 


Preface  xi 

1908.  Portions  of  Chapters  II  and  V 
appeared  in  Good  Housekeeping,  Septem- 
ber and  November,  1908.  Other  sections 
of  Chapter  II  and  much  of  Chapter  III 
were  written  for  Psychotherapy  which 
has  already  published  in  Volume  I,  No.  1, 
many  of  the  facts  and  statements  made 
in  Chapter  III. 

The  editor  of  Psychotherapy  deserves 
a  special  word  of  gratitude  because  his 
journal  is  a  course  of  study  rather  than  a 
magazine  and  all  of  its  articles  are  there- 
fore copyrighted.  The  Congregationalist, 
in  its  issues  of  August  1,  1908  and  Decem- 
ber 12,  1908,  contains  in  articles  I  wrote 
for  it  some  of  the  ideas  and  sentences  to 
be  found  in  Chapter  VIII. 

But  the  book  as  a  whole  will  seem,  I 
trust,  to  possess  the  same  unity  the  reader 
would  perhaps  have  found  in  it  had  none 
of  its  contents  first  seen  the  light  in 
magazines. 

To  Mr.  George  P.  Morris,  the  Reverend 
Howard  A.  Bridgman,  D.D.,  and  the  Rev- 
erend Chauncey  J.  Hawkins  I  am  grateful 
for  special  courtesies,  and  the  book  could 


xii  Preface 

not  have  been  written  at  all  but  for  the 
unfailing  consideration  of  my  wife,  Ger- 
trude Wilson  Powell,  who  has  given  me 
in  the  home  the  conditions  which  have 
made  it  possible  for  me  to  write  the  book 
without  neglecting  any  of  my  parish 
duties. 

L.  P.  P. 
St.  John's  Rectory, 
Northampton,  Mass. 
January   i,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.     What  the  Emmanuel  Movement 
Is  .... 

II.  The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town 

III.  A  Year's  Results     . 

IV.  The  Treatment  of  the  Nervous 
V.  The  Queer  One  in  the  House 

VI.    The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic 
VII.    The  Miscellaneous  Cases. 
VIII.    The  Movement  and  the  Church 
Notes        .... 
Some  Books  to  Read 
Index        .... 


i 
16 
33 
53 

83 
104 
127 
144 
167 
181 
189 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

St.  John's  Church,  Northampton,  Mass. 

Frontispiece 
Photograph  by  Katherine  E.  McClellan 

An  Old  Street  in  Northampton  where 
George  Bancroft  once  Lived.  Jenny 
llnd  spent  her  honeymoon  here       .       l8 

The  Reception  Room     .         .         .         „     32 

The  Rector's  Study     ....       54 

The  Site  op  Jonathan  Edwards's  House, 
with  the  Elm  which  he  Planted 
Facing  it 144 


The  Emmanuel  Movement 
in  a  New  England  Town 


CHAPTER  I 

WHAT   THE   EMMANUEL   MOVEMENT   IS 

THE  world  is  growing  more  religious. 
Men  to-day  are  thinking,  reading, 
talking  about  spiritual  things  who  a 
while  ago  were  bored  by  the  mere  mention 
of  them.  The  impression  is  both  widen- 
ing and  deepening  that  religion  can  do 
more  for  men  than  it  is  doing  now.  A 
vision  of  a  Christ  who  heals  the  body  and 
the  mind  as  well  as  soul  is  brightening 
before  the  world's  imagination.  Not  since 
Ambrose  waved  his  emperor  away  in 
proud  disdain  from  the  Milan  Cathe- 
dral and  the  golden-mouthed  Chrysostom 


2       The  Emmanuel  Movement 

walked  the  Euxine  sands  without  a 
hearing  have  men  been  so  inclined  as 
now  to  sing: 

"  Thy  touch  has  still  its  ancient  power  J 
No  word  from  Thee  can  fruitless  fall.'' 

Many  of  the  doctors  are  giving  im- 
pulse to  this  drift  of  thought  and  feeling 
by  a  curious  depreciation  of  their  pro- 
fession and  its  agencies.  Professor  Soil- 
man  calls  therapeutics  "a  confusion" 
rather  than  an  art  or  science.  Drugs 
are  in  the  minds  of  many  "almost  mori- 
bund," says  Dr.  Barker  of  Johns  Hopkins. 
Their  place  will  soon  be  taken,  Sir  Fred- 
erick Treves  informs  us,  by  "simple 
living,  suitable  diet,  plenty  of  sun,  and 
plenty  of  fresh  air."  And  Continental 
experts  of  the  repute  of  Hayem,  Metch- 
nikoff,  Dubois,  Bordet,  Behring,  Roux, 
and  Ehrlich  are  manifestly  swinging  back 
to  the  viewpoint  of  Socrates  that  "there 
is  no  cure  for  the  body  apart  from  the 
mind." 

The  results  are  evident  on  every  side. 
The  world  over,  men  are  giving  up  the 


What  It  Is  3 

family  doctor;  some  for  cults  that  break 
with  medicine  alone,  some  for  cults  that 
break  also  with  religion  as  commonly 
received.  But  there  are  others,  fortu- 
nately far  more  numerous,  who  believe  in 
evolution  rather  than  in  revolution,  who 
want  the  best  that  is  to  be  without  renun- 
ciation of  the  best  that  is,  and  who  to- 
day are  turning  toward  the  healing  Christ 
without  turning  either  from  historic 
Christianity  or  from  scientific  medicine. 

Are  they  turning  in  vain?  Can  they 
have  the  healing  Christ  on  terms  they 
thus  lay  down?  No  question  so  perplex- 
ing has  perhaps  been  pressed  on  Christian 
faith  since  the  author  of  Lead,  Kindly 
Light  set  out,  three  quarters  of  a  century 
ago,  to  find  a  Church  true  enough  to 
teach  men  and  strong  enough  to  rule 
them.  But  its  answer  has  been  found. 
It  is  offered  by  a  mind  which  is  as  coura- 
geous and  original  as  Newman's  was, 
and  more  constructive  and  more  widely 
ranging.  It  is  illustrated  and  confirmed 
by  a  practical  experiment  of  which  the 
entire  world  is  taking  note. 


4       The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Reverend  Elwood  Worcester,  Ph.D., 
D.D.,  was  born  in  Massilon,  Ohio,  in 
1862,  graduated  in  1886  from  Columbia 
College,  and  from  the  General  Theological 
Seminary  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  1887,  was  made  a  Ph.D., 
magna  cum  laude,  by  the  University  of 
Leipzig  after  three  years'  study  of  phil- 
osophy under  Fechner,  ■  psychology  under 
Wundt,  and  Hebrew  under  the  two 
Delitzsches;  and  was  later  honoured 
with  the  D.D.  degree  by  Hobart  College 
and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
While  still  under  thirty,  Dr.  Worcester 
returned  to  America  to  serve  successively 
as  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Lehigh  Uni- 
versity, Rector  of  St.  Stephen's  Church 
in  Philadelphia,  and,  since  1904,  Rector 
of  Emmanuel  Church  in  Boston. 

The  answer  first  began  to  take  form 
in  Dr.  Worcester's  mind  in  his  Phila- 
delphia days  in  friendly  converse  with 
the  most  distinguished  member  of  his 
parish,  Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell, 2  the  eminent 

"  Here  and  elsewhere  the  numerals  in  the  text  refer 
to  notes  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


What  It  Is  s 

neurologist.  The  method  of  its  practical 
expression  was  vaguely  suggested  in  the 
organisation,  some  three  years  ago,  for  the 
home  treatment  of  tuberculosis  of  the  Em- 
manuel class,  which  by  the  cure  of  from 
seventy-five  to  eighty  per  cent,  of  patients, 
invited  comparison  with  the  best  sani- 
tariums and  arrested  the  attention  even 
of  the  Japanese  Government.  The  work 
was  actually  begun  in  the  autumn  of  1906 
when,  profoundly  impressed  with  the 
possibilities  of  treating  nervous  troubles 
by  mental  and  spiritual  agencies,  Dr. 
Worcester,  after  taking  counsel  with 
medical  experts,  announced  his  willing- 
ness to  make  a  venture  no  minister  of 
large  reputation  and  of  scientific  training 
had  ever  made  before. 

Happily,  he  had  at  hand  a  helper  of 
peculiar  fitness  for  the  work.  Born  in  the 
north  of  Ireland,  graduated  from  Oxford, 
made  a  D.D.  by  Glasgow  University, 
sometime  student  in  philosophy,  psycho- 
logy, and  theology  at  Berlin,  the  Reverend 
Samuel  McComb,  A.M.,  D.D.,  brought  to 
the  Emmanuel  movement  an  experience 


6       The  Emmanuel  Movement 

like  that  of  Dr.  Worcester,  acquired  not 
only  in  the  ministry  but  also  in  the  aca- 
demic sphere,  for  he  was  once  Professor 
of  Ecclesiastical  History  at  Queen's  Uni- 
versity, Canada.  To  complete  the  anal- 
ogy, Dr.  McComb  had  for  his  friend  and 
his  parishioner  across  the  sea  no  less  a 
neurologist  than  Dr.  William  Graham, 
under  whom  he  made  a  special  study  of 
abnormal  psychology. 

It  was  to  two  men  so  similarly  and 
singularly  prepared  as  Drs.  Worcester 
and  McComb  that  the  responsibility 
fell  of  proving  to  the  world  that  the 
healing  ministry  of  Jesus  can  be  restored 
without  hurt  either  to  intelligent  Chris- 
tianity or  to  scientific  medicine. 

From  the  first,  members  of  all  churches 
and  of  none  have  been  welcomed  with 
good- will  and  treated  without  charge. 
Not  only  has  there  been  no  proselyting, 
but  also  every  disposition  on  the  part 
of  patients  to  lose  interest  in  their  own 
denomination  has  been  steadily  dis- 
couraged. In  some  instances  Protestants 
and  Catholics  have  become  more  faithful 


What  It  Is  7 

to  their  own  because  through  the  Em- 
manuel movement  they  have  found  the 
healing  Christ,  and  evidences  of  the 
fact  are  multiplying. 

The  Emmanuel  movement  is  not  among 
the  various  cults  in  competition  with 
the  doctors.  No  case  has  been  treated 
save  after  diagnosis  and  approval  by  a 
reputable  doctor,  and  to  make  the  diag- 
nosis as  accurate  as  possible  a  staff  of 
experts  is  ever  in  attendance,  headed  by 
Dr.  Isidor  H.  Coriat,  sometime  associated 
with  Dr.  Morton  Prince,  who  has  advised 
at  every  stage,  co-operated  in  the  prepa- 
ration of  the  official  Emmanuel  book,  and 
in  other  ways  assisted  to  keep  secure  the 
relationship  between  the  movement  and 
the  medical  profession.  Physicians  from 
all  parts  of  the  land  who  have  come 
from  time  to  time  to  make  a  study  of 
the  work  have  gone  away  to  praise  both 
its  principles  and  practice,  and  Dr.  Rich- 
ard Cabot,  after  a  careful  reading  of  the 
records  of  the  cases  covering  a  long 
period,  reports  under  his  own  signature 
in   The  Outlook3   that    great    good   has 


8        The  Emmanuel  Movement 

been  done  and  no  harm  that  he  can 
find. 

Looking  back  over  two  years  of  work 
in  Boston  and  one  year  in  Northampton, 
Detroit,  Chicago,  and  elsewhere — for  the 
movement  has  been  reaching  out  as 
rapidly  as  is  desirable — the  results  may 
thus  be  briefly  stated:  Without  detach- 
ment from  their  church,  or  from  their 
doctor,  several  thousand  people  have 
been  cured  or  much  improved  who  once 
were  suffering  from  such  ills  as  nervous 
dyspepsia,  neuralgia,  false  paralysis,  neur- 
asthenia, psychasthenia,  hypochondria, 
melancholia,  hysteria,  insomnia,  fixed 
ideas,  morbid  fears,  suicidal  tendencies, 
alcoholism,  morphinism,  cocainism,  and 
kindred  troubles  of  the  nerves  or  mind. 

Whether  the  treatment  offers  more  than 
a  wholesome  mental  attitude  and  a  bra- 
cing spiritual  atmosphere  in  such  ills  as 
Bright 's  disease,  tuberculosis,  actual  par- 
alysis, arthritis,  and  well  established 
insanity  has  not  as  yet  been  seriously 
considered.  The  movement  is  essentially 
conservative.     It  defers  at  every  point 


What  It  Is  9 

to  science.  It  accepts  the  judgment  of 
the  medical  experts  that,  while  mental  and 
spiritual  treatment  may  prove  efficacious 
in  functional  nervous  disorders4  where 
there  is  nothing  worse  than  the  impaired 
or  perverted  action  of  some  vital  organ, 
other  treatment  is  required  in  all  organic 
troubles  where  degeneration  of  tissue 
has  actually  begun.  Along  the  line  laid 
down  by  Dr.  Mitchell  in  the  words 
"there  is  no  scientific  record  of  any  case 
of  organic  disease  having  been  cured  by 
any  form  of  influence  exerted  through 
the  mind,"  the  Emmanuel  movement 
rests  its  front,  and  refuses  to  take  any 
forward  step  into  the  field  of  the  organic 
till  the  medical  profession  orders  an 
advance. 

To  some,  Emmanuel  methods  may 
seem  strange.  To  the  psychologist  and 
the  neurologist  the  principles  at  any  rate 
are  perfectly  familiar.  They  are  outlined 
in  the  entrancing  pages  of  Professor 
William  James  and  Dr.  Mitchell,  and 
though  they  are  overshadowed  in  the 
public   mind   by   his    "rest    cure"    Dr. 


io     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Mitchell  has  made  use  of  some  of  them 
without  their  terminology  for  more  than 
thirty  years.  He  has  even  established 
connection  between  religion  and  medicine 
by  calling  on  the  clergyman  to  help  him 
in  specific  instances,  and  no  longer 
ago  than  last  May  he  remarked  that 
"the  physician  who  has  never  sought  in 
such  cases  the  aid  of  the  clergyman  has 
missed  some  valuable  assistance." 

The  Emmanuel  movement  in  Boston 
makes  use  of  both  the  social  uplift  and 
the  individual  direction.  There  is  a  class 
for  the  prevention  of  functional  ailments 
as  well  as  a  clinic  for  their  cure.  Any 
Wednesday  evening  from  October  until 
May  you  will  find,  if  you  drop  in  at 
Emmanuel  Church,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  church  interiors  in  the  land 
well  filled  with  worshippers,  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  those  who  think  the  mid-week 
service  a  spent  force  in  organised  re- 
ligious life.  A  restful  prelude  on  the 
organ  allures  the  soul  to  worship.  With- 
out the  aid  of  any  choir  several  familiar 
hymns  are  sung  by  everybody  who  can 


What  It  Is  ii 

sing  and  many  who  can  not.  A  Bible 
lesson  is  read.  The  Apostles'  Creed 
is  said  in  unison.  Requests  for  prayers 
in  special  cases  are  gathered  up  into  one 
prayerful  effort  made  without  the  help 
of  any  book.  One  Wednesday  evening 
Dr.  Worcester  gives  the  address,  another 
Dr.  McComb,  still  another  some  expert 
in  neurology  or  psychology.  The  theme 
is  usually  one  of  practical  significance, 
like  hurry,  worry,  fear,  or  grief,  and  the 
healing  Christ  is  made  real  in  consequence 
to  many  an  unhappy  heart.  Though 
the  mass  effect  of  the  service,  which  is 
always  followed  by  a  purely  social  hour 
in  the  adjoining  parish  house,  is  prophy- 
lactic, it  is  not  at  all  uncommon  for 
insomnia,  neuralgia,  and  kindred  ills  to 
disappear  in  the  self-forgetfulness  of  such 
an  evening. 

But  it  is  in  the  clinic,  conducted  every 
day  by  one  or  other  of  the  two  head 
workers  assisted  by  eleven  helpers,  that 
the  treatment  is  direct  and  definite. 
Every  applicant  must  first  submit  to 
diagnosis.     If  organic  trouble  is  disclosed, 


12      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

he  is  not  accepted  as  a  patient.  If  the 
disease  appears  to  be  simply  functional, 
the  applicant  is  registered  for  treatment 
and  passed  on  into  the  Rector's  study. 
There  he  finds  himself  in  an  environment 
in  which  the  very  appointments  of  the 
room  conduce  to  the  disclosure  of  every 
fact,  physical,  mental,  social,  moral, 
spiritual,  which  bears  in  any  way  upon 
the  situation.  To  the  frankness  which 
the  family  doctor's  presence  can  evoke  is 
added  the  confidence  which  the  confes- 
sional inspires.  All  the  conditions  are 
for  many  a  new  patient  immediately 
supplied  which  unlock  the  hidden  whole- 
someness  of  his  inner  life  and  lead  by 
rapid  stages  to  complete  recovery. 

Where  more  is  needed  than  the  full 
self -revelation,  in  itself  curative,  and 
the  prayer  and  godly  counsel  which 
succeed  it,  the  patient  is  next  invited 
to  be  seated  in  a  reclining  chair,  taught 
to  relax  all  his  muscles,  calmed  by 
soothing  words,  and  in  a  state  of  phy- 
sical relaxation  and  mental  quiet  the 
unwholesome    thoughts    and     the     un- 


What  It  Is  13 

toward  symptoms  are  dislodged  from  his 
consciousness,  and  in  their  place  are 
sown  the  seeds  of  more  health-giving 
thoughts  and  better  habits.  The  spirit- 
ual result  of  such  an  experience  outbulks 
all  else.  As  week  after  week  patients 
come  for  treatment,  they  frequently 
lose  interest  in  the  ailments  which  were 
once  their  torment  and  cease  to  think 
at  all  about  them,  physical  health  be- 
comes a  casual  by-product  of  the  spiritual 
uplift,  and  the  sometime  patient,  well 
once  more,  one  day  goes  on  his  way,  like 
Jacob  after  Peniel  singing  to  the  world, 
"  I  have  seen  God  face  to  face,  and  my 
life  is  preserved." 

But  the  patient  has  his  share  in  apply- 
ing the  treatment.  The  cure  is  never 
permanent  without  his  complete  and 
constant  co-operation.  The  walls  of  Jeri- 
cho may  fall  before  one  blast  of  the 
Emmanuel  trumpet.  There  is,  however, 
many  a  weary  mile  of  self  re-education 
to  be  trudged  before  the  promised  land 
of  perfect  health  is  his  to  keep.  The 
spendthrift  emotions  are  to  be  brought 


14     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

to  book.  The  relaxed  will  is  to  be 
re-energised.  Conscience,  grown  perhaps 
a  little  careless,  is  to  be  aroused  and  kept 
awake.  Every  day  while  he  is  under- 
going treatment  and  for  many  a  day 
thereafter  the  patient  must  go  alone  into 
the  silence  of  suggestibility,  drive  out  the 
morbid  and  the  evil  from  his  mind,  and 
all  day  long  by  sustained  effort  keep  his 
mind  filled  with  better  thoughts. 

There  is  among  the  Emmanuel  methods 
a  place  for  the  "  rest  cure. "  It  is  in  cer- 
tain cases  clearly  indicated.  But  there  is 
place  also  for  the  "work-cure,"  and  almost 
two  thousand  of  the  cases  which  have 
come  for  consideration,  consultation,  or 
treatment  have  been  set  at  some  steady 
work  that  unifies  the  personality,  swings 
the  centre  out  of  self,  occupies  the 
thoughts,  and  furnishes  normal  and  hab- 
itual expression  to  the  new-born  energies. 

Every  Emmanuel  worker  is  at  times 
awe-struck  by  the  immediate  effective- 
ness of  the  treatment.  Headaches  of 
long  standing  have  quickly  disappeared. 
Insomnia,  so  stubborn  in  the  presence 


What  It  Is  15 

of  the  doctor,  has  sometimes  vanished  in 
one  sitting.  The  liver,  long  dependent 
upon  alteratives,  has  at  once  begun  to 
function  normally.  Heart  pain,  not  less 
severe  because  only  functional,  has  been 
relieved  in  one  short  interview.  And 
the  unhappy  sufferer  from  hysterical 
paralysis  has  left  her  bed  to  walk  as  if  by 
magic  after  one  clear  call  to  make  the 
venture.  But  the  only  magic  known  in 
the  Emmanuel  movement  is  the  magic  of 
a  mind  surcharged  with  faith  and  opera- 
tive within  bounds  set  for  it  by  the 
scientific  doctor.  And  when  the  princi- 
ples and  methods  of  the  movement  are 
understood  and  everywhere  in  exercise 
no  one  will  think  to  leave  his  faithful 
minister  or  his  good  family  doctor  to 
find  the  healing  Christ  whose  "touch  has 
still  its  ancient  power." 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CLINIC  IN  A  COLLEGE  TOWN 

MORTHAMPTON  is  both  a  literary 
*  ^  and  an  academic  centre.  Though 
"  How  is  your  new  book  selling? "  has  not 
as  yet  supplanted  here  all  current  com- 
ment on  the  weather,  with  Mr.  Cable,  the 
Lees,  and  a  score  or  more  of  lesser  lights 
luminous  in  books  and  magazines,  North- 
ampton would  appear  to  have  some  title 
to  the  place  assigned  it  in  a  recent 
magazine5  among  the  literary  centres 
of  the  land. 

To  academic  import  the  city  rests  its 
claim,  not  only  on  the  circumstance  that 
within  a  radius  of  ten  miles  are  located 
Amherst  College,  Mount  Holyoke  College, 
the  Massachusetts  Agricultural  College, 
and  several  other  educational  institutions 
of  more  than  local  reputation,  but  also 

16 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    17 

on  the  presence  at  Northampton's  very 
heart  of  Smith  College,  which  brings  here 
every  year  some  fifteen  hundred  young 
women  from  all  parts  of  the  United  States 
and  enables  the  Northampton  pulpit  to 
minister  to  congregations  almost  as  cos- 
mopolitan as  old  St.  Paul's  in  London. 

This  is  essentially  a  woman's  town. 
While  there  are  here  important  manu- 
facturing and  business  interests,  the 
young  men  as  they  grow  up  to  man- 
hood are  apt,  as  in  many  other  places  in 
New  England,  to  migrate  to  larger  and 
more  remunerative  fields  of  usefulness 
and  to  perpetuate  elsewhere  the  family 
name.  To  those  they  leave  behind  are 
added  in  increasing  numbers  every  year 
students,  teachers,  officers  of  Smith  Col- 
lege, Smith  Agricultural  College,  the 
Clarke  School,  the  Burnham  School, 
the  Capen  School,  and  other  institutions, 
mothers  who  for  reasons  of  economy  or 
family  attachment  would  be  within  easy 
reach  of  their  children  in  the  colleges  or 
schools,  and  women  caught  in  the  com- 
plex machinery  of  modern  social  life  and 


18     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

glad  to  find  a  haven  in  a  city  of  unusual 
refinement  where  if  one  waits  long  enough 
intrinsic  worth  wins  social  confidence. 

In  such  a  city  with  its  highly  sensitised 
and  truly  cosmopolitan  population,  the 
Emmanuel  movement  would  seem  to 
have  a  special  work  to  do.  While  as 
both  statistics  and  appearances  indicate 
the  average  of  health  here  is  unusually 
high  and  to  become  ill  is  ill  form  indeed, 
there  are  always  some  who,  in  spite  of  all 
the  safeguards  of  a  wholesome  public 
opinion  and  the  special  provisions  of  our 
well-ordered  institutions,  fall  into  in- 
somnia and  other  mild  neuroses.  There 
are  others  who  are  slow  in  finding  them- 
selves in  an  old  community  where  social 
lines  were  long  since  drawn  and  relation- 
ships to  mean  much  must  grow  slowly. 
For  these  and  others  there  has  long  been 
needed  a  bureau  of  information  about  the 
things  that  make  for  inner  health,  a 
clearing-house  for  forlornness,  worry,  fear, 
and  grief,  a  spiritual  clinic  to  which 
frayed  nerves,  wounded  hearts,  and 
troubled  minds  can  be  brought  for  calm, 


Z  H 

O  Z 

I-  uj 

0.  Q- 

5  M 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    19 

consolation,  and  uplift.  And  many  of 
all  faiths  and  no  faith  at  all  have  this 
year  past  come  to  the  spiritual  clinic  of 
St.  John's  Church  to  satisfy  this  need  and 
to  seek  help  in  working  out  some  of  life's 
more  complex  and  elusive  problems. 

The  Emmanuel  work  in  St.  John's 
Church  must  be  done  amid  conditions 
set  by  parish  policy.  The  Rector  has  no 
assistant.  Though  the  list  of  registered 
communicants  numbers  only  397,  he  has 
in  his  care  all  told  about  twelve  hundred 
souls.  In  a  parish  in  which  almost  three 
fourths  of  the  worshippers  are  but  tempo- 
rary residents  and  in  which  no  such  solid- 
arity of  interest  is  possible  as  in  the 
ordinary  parish,  the  minister  inevitably 
becomes  the  one  unifying  force  and  has  to 
be  habitually  diligent  in  visiting  his  peo- 
ple. The  income  of  the  church  must  also 
be  maintained  from  month  to  month, 
even  where  there  is  as  here  a  considerable 
endowment;  for  deficits  are  difficult  to 
dissipate  where  the  nucleus  of  resident 
membership  is  small  and  more  truly 
representative  of  plain  living  and  high 


20     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

thinking  than  of  wealth  and  luxury. 
Organisations,  too,  have  in  such  a  parish 
a  large  place  since  many  of  the  temporary 
residents  have  both  consecrated  zeal  and 
ample  leisure,  and  the  Emmanuel  clinic 
has  had  in  consequence  to  take  its  place 
among  twelve  efficient  parish  organisa- 
tions, ranging  in  membership  from  ten 
to  one  hundred  and  thirty,  and  supple- 
mented since  the  clinic  was  established  by 
two  more  societies  now  in  a  flourishing 
condition. 

To  be  of  service  here  the  clinic  has  to  be 
kept  within  limits.  Perhaps  proof  that 
this  has  been  done  will  become  evident 
when  I  state  that  though  my  habit  is  to 
pay  about  one  thousand  parish  calls  a 
year,  I  paid  in  1908  more  than  twelve 
hundred  calls  and  received  at  least  four 
times  as  many  calls  from  my  own  people 
as  has  been  their  wont  in  other  years  to 
pay.  In  spite  of  the  business  depression 
which  seriously  affected  one  third  of  our 
communicants  the  Easter  and  the  Christ- 
mas offerings  were  larger  than  usual  and 
the  parish  closed  the  year  with  a  surplus. 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    2 1 

The  number  of  baptisms  and  communi- 
cants received  from  distant  parishes  has 
been  the  largest  in  several  years,  and  with 
scarcely  an  exception  the  organisations  of 
the  parish  have  had  the  most  prosperous 
year  in  their  existence,  thanks  to  the 
co-operation  and  consideration  which  the 
Rector  has  received  the  whole  year 
through  from  all  concerned. 

The  community  as  truly  as  the  parish 
prescribes  conditions  to  which  the  Em- 
manuel work  of  St.  John's  Church  must 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  conform.  In  a 
city  of  20,000  people  the  good-will  of  all 
Christians,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike, 
is  of  great  value.  Ministering  as  the 
Emmanuel  worker  must  when  he  alone 
in  a  community  is  ministering  in  the 
Emmanuel  way  to  Christians  of  every  fold, 
to  proselyte  would  be  alike  a  blunder  and 
a  sin.  In  my  relationship  with  those 
who  come  to  me  from  other  folds,  I  have 
lost  no  opportunity  to  strengthen  their 
connection  and  to  deepen  their  devotion  to 
their  own.  In  three  instances  I  have 
positively  forbidden  attendance  on  the 


22      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

services  of  my  own  church,  and  in  another 
instance  induced  a  patient  of  much 
consequence  in  a  neighbouring  commun- 
ity to  join  the  church  of  his  upbringing 
after  his  own  good  pastor's  years  of 
eloquent  persuasiveness  had  failed.  I 
am  therefore  venturing  to  take  comfort 
in  the  words  of  old  Cato: 

"  'T  is  not  in  mortals  to  command  success, 
But  we  '11  do  more,  Sempronius,  we  11  deserve 
it." 

And  I  am  sure  the  Emmanuel  move- 
ment will,  some  day,  when  rightly  under- 
stood, contribute  substantially  in  many 
a  community  to  church  unity. 

The  relationship  of  the  Emmanuel 
worker  and  the  doctor  in  a  city  small 
enough  for  everybody  to  have  first-hand 
knowledge  of  his  neighbour's  business  is 
of  prime  importance.  The  work  can  be 
in  fact  at  every  point  embarrassed  unless 
the  doctor  gives  a  glad  consent  and 
constant  help.  Northampton  doctors 
with  scarcely  an  exception  from  the  first 
have  shown  a  friendly  spirit  toward  the 
clinic   here.     If   any   have    regarded    it 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    23 

from  a  selfish  point  of  view,  I  have  not 
been  made  aware  of  it.  But  I  have  had 
frequent  evidences,  even  when  some  of 
them  have  not  formally  endorsed  the 
movement  as  a  whole,  of  their  discrimi- 
nating and  scientific  interest  in  all  my 
efforts,  and  have  had  their  counsel 
and  co-operation  all  along  the  way. 

As  in  Boston  so  here  a  doctor's  diagnosis 
has  been  in  every  case  required,  and  at 
my  request  the  doctors  have  made  their 
usual  charge  for  it.  I  have  claimed  and 
received  their  co-operation  in  many 
cases  from  a  distance  as  well  as  from 
Northampton  where  functional  nervous 
disorders  were  accompanied  by  organic 
and  other  troubles,  and  have  insisted  as 
in  diagnosis,  that  they  charge  a  proper 
fee  for  every  service  rendered.  Though 
they  have  never  known  it,  I  have  on 
several  occasions  saved  to  them  their 
own  patients  grown  discontented,  and 
have  strengthened  them  in  certain  in- 
stances in  the  family  confidence.  They 
in  return  have  sent  me  some  cases  which 
had  baffled  medicine  only  to  find  at  last 


24       The  Emmanuel  Movement 

more  or  less  relief  in  spiritual  treatment, 
and  I  have  at  their  request  worked  by 
the  bedside  more  than  once  with  them 
where  physical  disease  has  been  ac- 
companied by  depression  or  distress  of 
mind.  Three  cases  of  typical  co-opera- 
tion among  my  own  parishioners  will 
illustrate  the  true  relationship  between 
the  doctor  and  the  minister  in  the 
Emmanuel  movement. 

Case  i. — For  three  years,  the  wife,  no 
longer  young,  of  an  English  workingman 
had  been  suffering  from  neurasthenia 
of  which  the  most  distressing  symptoms 
were  neuralgic  pains,  nervous  indigestion, 
and  extreme  depression.  Three  compe- 
tent doctors  had  tried  in  vain  to  help  her. 
They  could  not  lift  her  out  of  her  de- 
pression. She  was  last  January  praying 
to  be  freed  from  her  distress  by  death, 
and  the  family  were  no  longer  offering 
any  serious  opposition  to  her  deepening 
despair.  With  the  doctor's  ready  ap- 
proval, I  set  out  by  the  Emmanuel 
treatment  to  change  her  and  the  family's 
attitude  toward  her  condition,  and  to 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town     25 

build  up  in  them  all  new  confidence  in 
the  doctor  and  his  medicine.  Two  visits 
proved  sufficient.  There  was  from  all 
immediate  response.  Within  forty-eight 
hours  mental  and  physical  improvement 
became  manifest.  Within  a  month  the 
doctor  ceased  to  visit  her,  and  though 
she  now  and  then  has  a  bad  day  and  turns 
to  him  for  medicine,  she  is  much  improved 
in  every  way  and  is  far  more  serene  and 
happy. 

Case  2. — A  woman,  fifty-four  years  old, 
had  suffered  for  four  years  from  asthma 
which  had  steadily  grown  worse.  With 
it  of  late  heart  and  kidney  complications 
had  been  suspected.  In  spite  of  all 
efficient  doctors  have  done  for  her,  she 
had  plunged  deeper  into  hopelessness  and 
had  sometimes  wished  to  die.  On  one 
of  my  ordinary  parish  visits  I  found  her 
on  the  point  of  turning  to  a  doctor  in 
another  city.  At  my  request  she  tried 
instead  another  doctor  in  Northampton. 
He  diagnosed  the  case  as  asthma  ac- 
companied by  bronchial  inflammation, 
but  no  other  complication.    He  gave  her  a 


26      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

prescription  which  proved  efficacious  for 
the  bronchial  inflammation  and  directed 
her  to  me  for  the  Emmanuel  treatment. 
On  July  ioth,  17th,  24th,  and  August 
4th,  I  gave  her  the  usual  quieting  treat- 
ment with  immediate  results.  The  asth- 
matic attacks  no  longer  came  by  day  and 
subsided  in  severity  at  night.  Her  hope- 
lessness gave  way  to  calm  and  cheerful- 
ness, and  her  general  condition  was  much 
improved  in  every  way. 

After  my  return  from  my  vacation  I 
saw  her  five  more  times  at  weekly  in- 
tervals, and  on  October  20th  discharged 
her.  Not  only  had  the  attacks  by  day 
ceased,  but  she  seldom  suffered  from  a 
night  attack,  and  now  reports  herself, 
in  spite  of  occasional  untoward  symp- 
toms, as  well  as  she  could  reasonably 
expect  to  be  with  her  history  of  pro- 
tracted invalidism. 

Case  3. — A  woman,  well  advanced  in 
years,  had  been  suffering  for  six  years  from 
what  appeared  to  be  a  malignant  growth 
within.  Though  an  exploratory  incision 
was  forbidden  by  her  age  and  her  weak 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    27 

heart,  there  were  present  all  the  char- 
acteristic symptoms  of  the  trouble.  For 
a  year  or  two  she  had  seldom  been  able 
to  leave  her  home  and  spent  a  large 
portion  of  her  time  in  bed. 

Being  a  devout  member  of  my  parish 
to  whom  I  had  for  four  years  paid  fre- 
quent visits,  she  was  set  upon  receiving 
the  Emmanuel  treatment.  My  protest 
that  the  Emmanuel  movement  has  no 
message  for  cases  like  hers  was  met  by 
such  outbursts  of  faith  in  God's  power 
as  is  seldom  seen  outside  of  Christian 
Science.  Her  doctor,  with  largeness  of 
vision  and  keenness  of  sympathy,  advised 
the  treatment  with  the  thought  that 
though  it  could  not  possibly  effect  a  cure 
it  might  at  least  cheer  her  up  and  give 
her  strength  to  bear  the  pain. 

On  January  10,  1908,  I  gave  her  the 
first  quieting  treatment.  To  my  amaze- 
ment though  not  to  hers,  the  lancinating 
pain,  which  had  long  been  present  prac- 
tically unrelieved  save  now  and  then  by 
morphia  which  had  to  be  given  sparingly 
because  of  her  weak  heart,  immediately 


28      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

disappeared,  the  other  more  definite 
symptom  also  ceased  for  a  time,  and  the 
habitual  insomnia  was  superseded  by  regu- 
lar and  profound  sleep  which  has  seldom 
during  the  year  past  been  interrupted. 

From  March  to  June  the  treatment 
was  discontinued,  and  all  the  symptoms 
except  insomnia  gradually  returned.  Then 
for  some  months  treatment  except  dur- 
ing my  few  weeks'  vacation  was  given 
every  fifth  or  seventh  day  with  the  re- 
sultant practical  disappearance  once  again 
of  the  symptoms.  In  November  and 
December  no  treatments  seemed  to  be 
required.  The  general  health  is  better, 
her  physican  says,  than  it  has  been  in 
many  years,  and  he  is  now  convinced 
that  the  disease  was  probably  not  what  it 
first  appeared  to  be,  but  some  acute  neu- 
ralgic condition,  which  has  lately  shifted 
to  another  part  of  the  body,  probably  re- 
sulting from  a  very  complicated  surgical 
operation  which  she  underwent  some  sev- 
en years  ago. 

Better  than  the  improvement — at  which 
everyone  who  knows  this  Christian  saint 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town   29 

has  marvelled — in  her  physical  health  has 
been  the  new  access  of  mental  strength 
and  spiritual  vigour,  and  she  bids  me 
say  to  those  who  read  these  lines  that 
the  new  faith,  the  new  joy,  the  new  peace 
she  now  knows  in  Jesus  Christ  have  lifted 
her  above  the  anxiety  she  once  felt  about 
her  physical  condition. 

As  Ray  Stannard  Baker  has  pointed 
out,  back  of  the  Emmanuel  movement 
already  emerges  into  view  to  those  who 
have  keen  eyesight  the  inevitable  rivalry 
between  religion  and  medicine  to  serve 
men  more  than  hitherto.  But  no  doctor 
who  adds  to  knowledge  and  experience 
in  his  profession  nobility  of  character 
need  have  concern.  The  Emmanuel 
movement  has  not  come  to  challenge  any 
claim  to  which  medicine  has  a  clear  title. 
It  has  a  purpose  more  beneficent, — to 
pool  the  resources  of  religion  and  medi- 
cine, to  pair  the  minister  and  doctor  in 
the  service  of  those  whose  ills  are  of  the 
mind  and  soul  as  well  as  body,  and  to 
bring  to  an  end  that  hostility  to  medicine 
which  is  too  manifest  on  every  side. 


30      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

This  fact  I  have  never  once  forgotten  in 
my  clinic.  I  have  not  only  never  lost 
an  opportunity  to  make  it  evident  to  the 
community,  I  have  also  habitually  so 
emphasised  the  fact  in  my  relationship 
with  the  physicians  that  as  I  enter  on  the 
second  year  of  the  good  work  almost 
every  case  under  treatment  has  been  sent 
me  by  some  physician  who  understands 
both  my  motive  and  my  method,  and  I 
am  so  often  called  to  the  bedside  by  some 
doctor  that  it  is  at  times  almost  impossi- 
ble to  observe  any  clinic  hours  at  all. 

It  would  be  difficult,  I  think,  to  find 
a  reputable  doctor  anywhere  who  would 
object  to  the  good  offices  of  a  minister  in 
the  following  cases  which  happen  to  be  the 
ones  which  I  am  treating  now:  four  cases 
of  neurasthenia  of  such  long  standing 
that  it  had  been  several  years  since  any 
of  them  had  had  systematic  treatment  of 
any  sort  from  a  doctor  before  I  claimed 
the  doctor's  co-operation  a  few  weeks  ago ; 
two  cases  of  obsessions  which  have  been 
refused  treatment  by  regular  physicians ; 
one   case   of   headache   of  three  years' 


The  Clinic  in  a  College  Town    31 

duration  which  the  oculist,  the  dentist, 
and  the  family  doctor  have  each  in  turn 
failed  to  relieve  but  which  under  spir- 
itual treatment  is  almost  gone ;  two  cases 
of  extreme  depression  consequent  upon 
misfortune;  two  cases  of  exaggerated 
"New  England  conscience,"  which  has 
made  home  miserable  to  all  who  live  in  it ; 
one  case  of  insomnia  for  which  the  doctor 
has  discovered  no  physical  cause;  and 
three  cases  of  alcoholism,  one  of  which,  a 
woman,  lives  in  a  physician's  household 
and  comes  to  me  with  his  enthusiastic 
approval. 

Far  from  hurting  the  physician's  pocket 
or  prestige,  the  Emmanuel  movement 
conducted  in  continuous  co-operation 
with  him  will  one  day  increase  public 
confidence  in  him.  The  disposition  to 
stray  from  one  doctor  to  another  will 
disappear  as  the  minister  more  and  more 
becomes  the  family  adviser  in  regard  to 
spiritual  and  mental  hygiene.  The  doc- 
tor will  be  rated  higher,  paid  more 
promptly,  and  retained  even  though, 
being  human,  he  may  sometimes  err  in 


32      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

judgment  or  fail  to  effect  the  cure  the 
family  expect.  The  movement  will  es- 
tablish him  one  day  too  securely  in  the 
family  esteem  to  be  affected  by  the 
whims  of  the  neurotic  and  the  caprice 
of  the  unreasonable.  It  will  one  day 
make  him  once  again  the  good,  old- 
fashioned  family  doctor,  going  in  and 
out  among  the  families  who  love  him 
and  who  trust  him,  healing  broken 
hearts  as  well  as  broken  bodies,  co- 
operating with  the  minister  as  the  minis- 
ter co-operates  with  him,  doing  the  Great 
Physician's  work  in  all  humility,  and 
counting  it  clear  gain  if  once  in  a  great 
while  he  hears  a  voice  whispering  within 
his  soul  the  words  the  famous  London 
surgeon  spoke  to  the  old  family  doctor  in 
Beside  the  Bonnie  Briar  Bush:  "You  are 
an  honour  to  our  profession." 


CHAPTER  III 
a  year's  results 

THE  inauguration  in  Boston  of  the 
Emmanuel  movement  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1906  interested  no  one  more 
than  me.  As  literary  critic  in  1891, 
though  the  r61e  was  a  mere  sinecure,  of 
the  manuscript  of  Dr.  William  Osier's 
now  world-famous  book  on  The  Prac- 
tice of  Medicine,  I  had  had  unusual 
opportunities  to  learn  that  in  many 
instances  it  takes  more  than  medicine 
to  make  us  well  when  we  are  ill.  In  the 
preparation,  two  years  ago,  of  my  book 
on  Chrisimn  Science,  I  discovered  that 
underlying  all  the  forms  of  mental 
healing,  whether  practised  by  the  doctor 
or  by  the  Christian  Science  healer,  is  the 
principle  of  suggestion  and  that  when, 
3  33 


34     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

as  in  the  Emmanuel  movement,  faith  is 
added  to  suggestion  and  the  two  are 
exercised  within  the  bounds  designated 
by  scientific  medicine,  many  functional 
disorders  can  be  completely  cured  and 
ameliorating  conditions  brought  about 
even  in  some  other  ailments. 

When,  therefore,  on  the  stormiest 
Sunday  evening  in  the  autumn  of  1907, 
the  founder  of  the  Emmanuel  movement 
spoke  his  message  to  a  congregation 
which  packed  St.  John's  Church,  North- 
ampton, to  the  very  doors,  "I  was  not 
disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision." 
That  very  week,  I  opened  in  St.  John's 
parish  house  an  Emmanuel  clinic,  with- 
out the  Emmanuel  class,  and  at  once 
began  the  work.  The  first  three  months 
my  clinic  hours  were  from  four  to  six  on 
Tuesdays  and  Fridays.  Then  as  I  found 
that  there  were  cases  which  had  some 
claim  upon  me  and  yet  could  not  come 
save  in  the  evening,  I  substituted  the 
evening  for  the  afternoon  of  Friday. 
Now  after  a  year's  experience  I  set  aside 
my  Tuesday  mornings  for  the  clinic  and 


A  Year's  Results  35 

see  two  or  three  other  cases  in  the 
evening. 

Sometimes  it  has  cost  me  much  self- 
denial  to  refuse  to  give  more  time  to  the 
Emmanuel  work.  But  realising  that 
the  parish  which  has  first  claim  on  my 
time  must  also  have  the  first  considera- 
tion, and  that  my  experiment  will  not  fur- 
nish inspiration  to  other  churches  the 
land  over  to  undertake  the  work  unless 
I  prove  the  possibility  of  doing  it  without 
hurt  to  other  parish  interests,  I  have 
steadily  refused  to  go  beyond  the  limits 
which  the  local  situation  clearly  sets  and 
within  them  I  have  in  the  clinic  seen 
400  different  people  this  year  past  and 
have  given  systematic  treatment  to  105. 

Though  statistics  where  " nerves"  are 
concerned  are  difficult  to  collect,  to 
classify,  and  to  appraise,  the  diagram 
which  appears  on  page  37,  and  which 
was  prepared  with  painstaking  care 
and  with  every  allowance  for  uninten- 
tional exaggeration,  will  give  at  least  a 
general  idea  of  the  year's  results. 

Of  the  105  cases  sixty-five  have  come 


36     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

from  other  places  than  Northampton, 
chiefly  from  towns  and  cities  within  a  ra- 
dius of  twenty  miles.  Eighteen  were  men 
and  fourteen  college  students.  A  much 
larger  proportion,  however,  of  those  who 
have  consulted  me  but  once  have  been 
men,  and  not  only  have  the  local  edu- 
cational institutions  been  represented 
but  also  such  universities  and  colleges 
as  Harvard,  Yale,  and  Amherst.  Of  the 
300  whose  relationship  has  been  limited 
to  one  consultation  Northampton  leads 
in  numbers,  but  such  distant  States  as 
Maine  and  Indiana,  Florida  and  Missouri 
have  also  been  represented,  while  letters 
have  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

The  list  of  the  "apparently  cured" 
is  made  up  of  those  who  have  apparently 
returned  to  normal  health  and  have 
shown  no  disposition  to  relapse.  The 
"much  improved"  are  those  concerning 
whom  the  doctor's  judgment  has  con- 
firmed the  general  impression  and  the 
patient's  own  belief.  Among  the  "  slightly 
improved,"  at  least  two  are  likely  to  pass 
up  into  the  next  higher  class,  and  I  fear 


A  Year's  Results 


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38     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

a  serious  relapse  for  no  more  than  four. 
The  "  relapsed  "  are  not  a  constant  factor. 
There  have  never  been  more  than  two  at 
a  time  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover,  and 
the  restoration  usually  follows  the  relapse. 
Of  the  one  hundred  and  five  cases, 
twenty -four,  most  of  them  in  recent 
months,  have  been  sent  me  by  physi- 
cians of  their  own  accord,  and  it  is 
rapidly  becoming  difficult  for  me  to  ac- 
cept any  other  cases.  In  twenty-eight 
cases  I  have  had,  besides  the  doctor's 
diagnosis,  his  counsel  and  co-operation 
at  every  stage,  and  not  infrequently  the 
dentist,  the  oculist,  the  throat  specialist, 
the  orthopcedic  specialist,  or  the  neur- 
ologist has  made  an  important  contribu- 
tion to  the  convalescence.  Special  treat- 
ment for  insomnia,  occurring  as  a  symptom 
or  a  sequel  of  some  other  ailment  has  been 
given  to  twenty-eight  of  the  one  hundred 
and  five,  not  to  mention  at  least  fifty 
more  who  have  in  one  interview  been 
directed  to  the  art  of  natural  sleep.  The 
improvement  in  sleeping  has  been  in 
almost  every  instance  immediately  evi- 


A  Year's  Results  39 

dent,  as  in  the  numerous  instances  of 
constipation  for  which  suggestion  re- 
enforced  by  faith  seems  to  be  as  surely 
a  specific  as  quinine  is  for  malaria. 

Under  the  heading  of  "miscellaneous" 
are  grouped  cases  which  scarcely  find 
place  in  any  other  group.  They  range 
from  depression  following  business  dis- 
aster, domestic  infelicity,  and  family 
bereavement,  to  the  mental  distress  which 
comes  from  lack  of  adjustment  to  en- 
vironment or  from  actual  and  persistent 
homesickness.  Seldom  have  I  known 
such  joy  in  ministering  to  souls  in 
difficulty  as  I  have  experienced  in  dealing 
with  the  "miscellaneous, "  and  no  minis- 
ter can  ever  want  financial  remuneration 
for  his  Emmanuel  services  who  has  the 
proofs  that  I  have  had  from  my  "mis- 
cellaneous" patients  that  it  is  possible 
even  for  the  unimportant  to  "be  to  other 
souls  the  cup  of  strength  in  some  great 
agony. " 

Reducing  the  statistics  to  percentages, 
it  would  appear  that  about  twenty-four 
per  cent,  have  been  "apparently  cured," 


4©     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

forty-seven  per  cent,  "much  improved," 
thirteen  per  cent,  "slightly  improved," 
five  per  cent,  "not  improved."  If  the 
percentage  in  which  there  has  been  no 
improvement  seems  small,  so  small  in 
fact  as  to  appear  almost  invisible  to 
scientific  medicine  which  has  failed  alone 
to  effect  any  change  whatever  in  many 
of  the  ninety-three  cases  under  considera- 
tion, it  should  be  remembered  that 
before  I  undertake  the  treatment  of  any 
case  I  require  not  merely  the  diagnosis 
of  a  reputable  doctor  but  also  trust  my 
intuition  as  to  whether  I  can  with  my 
temperament  and  training  wake  in  the 
patient  the  faith  without  which  I  can 
do  nothing.  There  are  some  cases  in 
which,  though  the  prognosis  would  seem 
favourable,  I  feel  at  the  first  interview  my 
inability  to  help,  and  frankly  admit  the 
fact.  In  two  of  the  three  cases  in  which 
I  have  discontinued  the  treatment,  I 
have  done  so  because  I  found  myself 
unable  after  a  few  interviews  to  dominate 
the  situation  and  to  induce  the  patient 
scrupulously    to    follow    my  directions, 


A  Year's  Results  41 

and  taking  the  responsibility  upon  myself 
I  promptly  terminated  the  professional 
relationship. 

The  most  significant  results  of  the 
Emmanuel  treatment  are  psychical  and 
therefore  not  to  be  described  by  statis- 
tics. They  are  written  in  the  heart. 
They  shine  forth  from  the  face.  To 
some,  even  though  still  suffering  from 
ills  of  the  body  and  included  therefore 
in  the  list  of  the  " slightly  improved," 
the  new  uplift  of  the  soul,  the  new  seren- 
ity of  mind,  seems  to  make  the  body's 
ills  practically  negligible.  "  I  have  ceased 
to  have  an  interest  in  them, "  one  suffer- 
ing patient  said  to  me  who  in  her  darkness 
sees  the  light.  In  some  detail  for  pur- 
poses of  illustration  I  next  describe  five 
cases  too  elusive  for  a  diagram.  They 
happen  with  scarcely  an  exception  to  be 
true  representatives  of  New  England 
character  and  culture. 

Case  i. — My  first  case,  not  listed  in 
the  diagram,  came  some  months  before 
I  opened  my  clinic.  A  good  friend 
emerged  three  years  ago  from  the  shadow 


42     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

of  a  ghastly  tragedy  both  a  neurasthenic 
and  a  psychasthenic.  She  never  slept 
without  the  doctor's  help.  Attacks  of 
vertigo  seriously  interfered  with  walking. 
Two  neurologists  gave  her  no  hope  of 
recovery.  The  third  placed  the  entire 
responsibility  on  her  without  giving  her 
the  impetus  such  cases  always  need. 
Just  as  she  was  on  the  point  of  yielding 
to  despair,  in  August,  1907,  I  wrote  her 
an  insistent  protest,  bade  her  believe 
she  could  get  well  again,  and  set  her  at 
the  reading  of  Dubois's  two  illuminating 
books.  Within  a  month  she  was  much 
improved  and  now  she  writes  that  the 
sleeplessness  and  vertigo  are  wholly  gone, 
and  save  for  sad  memories  she  is  sure 
she  could  become  entirely  well  again. 
As  she  reflects  upon  her  great  improve- 
ment she  is  sure  that  changed  condi- 
tions far  more  favourable  that  came 
into  her  life  just  before  my  letter 
reached  her  have  combined  with  her 
new  psychical  philosophy  to  effect  the 
transformation  in  her  health.  My  ser- 
vice  apparently  was   to   shock   her   by 


A  Year's  Results  43 

an    earnest  letter  out    of   her  incipient 
despair. 

Case  2. — On  October  6,  1908,  a  woman 
fifty-six  years  of  age  came  to  my  clinic, 
suffering  from  ordinary  neurasthenia  for 
eighteen  years.  The  special  symptoms 
all  these  years  have  been  insomnia,  fixed 
ideas,  lack  of  concentration,  failing  mem- 
ory, and  habitual  egoism.  She  received 
treatment  every  week  until  December 
nth.  In  every  respect  she  was  a  model 
patient.  Though  her  improvement  was 
not  steady  it  was  never  seriously  in- 
terrupted. The  sleep  average  gradually 
rose  from  four  hours  a  night  to  six  or 
seven.  The  fixed  ideas  slowly  disap- 
peared. There  was  a  steady  gain  in 
strength  of  mind  and  body.  By  Decem- 
ber 1  st,  the  self-consciousness  had  all  but 
disappeared  and  she  could  bear  to  lie 
awake  at  times  without  morbidness  and 
fear.  Every  direction  I  gave  her  she 
scrupulously  followed.  She  read  widely 
and  deeply  of  the  most  optimistic  litera- 
ture. Week  by  week  she  added  to  her 
knowledge  of  the  principles  which  under- 


44     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

lie  good  health  for  the  nerves  and  grew 
more  expert  in  their  application  for 
herself.  When  on  December  nth,  I 
received  a  letter  from  her  containing 
the  following  words,  I  promptly  dis- 
charged her  as  practically  well:  "I  am 
cured.  I  sleep  as  other  people,  work, 
think,  and  am  normal.  Of  course  I  realise 
that  I  shall  have  setbacks,  but  they  will 
have  their  right  place  in  my  thinking 
and  be  no  more  a  bugbear  to  me." 

Case  3. — Another  woman,  the  same 
age,  came  to  me  March  27,  1908,  suffer- 
ing from  "heart  trouble"  unrelieved, 
though  many  doctors  had  at  one  time 
or  another  made  the  effort  to  relieve 
her.  Worse  than  the  "heart  trouble" 
was  the  extreme  discouragement  it 
brought.  The  immediate  diagnosis  of 
a  Northampton  doctor  disclosed  nothing 
worse  than  functional  derangement  of 
the  heart.  Treatment  was  at  once  begun, 
and  improvement  promptly  followed. 
The  heart  pain  was  felt  less  often,  was 
seldom  so  severe,  brought  less  depression 
and  anxiety  along  with  it,  and  by  May 


A  Year's  Results  45 

26th  the  patient  was  advised  to  suspend 
her  visits. 

At  my  request  she  kept  a  record  of  her 
progress  back  to  health,  and  before  me 
lie  forty  letters  from  her  constituting 
probably  the  most  valuable  testimony 
in  existence  to  the  effect  of  the  Em- 
manuel treatment  on  a  personality  of 
exquisite  refinement,  keen  insight,  and 
ripe  judgment.  The  day  after  her  first 
treatment  she  wrote: 

Do  you  wish  to  know  what  I  felt  and 
thought  as  you  spoke  yesterday?  At  first  an 
unendurable  sense  of  the  amount  of  trouble 
I  was  making  you,  but  as  I  listened  to  your 
words  it  came  to  me  what  it  means  that  God's 
minister  should  so  interpret  her  Heavenly 
Father  to  even  one  uneasy  soul.  As  you  talked 
on  and  I  so  quiet,  His  peace  came  to  me.  I 
came  home  comforted.  Whether  it  is  auto- 
suggestion or  awakened  conscience  the  practical 
result  is  this:  instead  of  turning  back  to  my 
pillow  this  morning  with  a  distressed  sigh 
because  of  the  fluttering  side  I  arose  at  once 
assuring  myself  it  is  nerves,  not  heart.  So  I 
went  about  my  duties,  assured  by  the  doctor's 
diagnosis  and  your  faith  which  upholds  mine. 
To-day  I  feel  steadied  and  set  upon  the  right 


46     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

road,  and  I  look  back  bewildered  that  I  could 
have  been  so  mistaken. 

On  April  23d  she  wrote: 

Truly  I  can  not  understand  myself  nor 
explain  the  peace  of  these  weeks.  The  fatigue 
and  exhaustion  of  Good  Friday  were  far  less 
than  ever  before,  and  although  sorry  for  their 
presence  I  was  neither  troubled  nor  afraid  as 
at  other  times.  The  disagreeable  symptoms 
have  a  way  of  appearing  still  most  unexpectedly. 
But  there  is  this  difference.  Before,  when  I 
was  living  in  the  belief  that  any  one  of  these 
occurrences  might  end  my  days  each  one  would 
be  followed  by  nervous  tremors  hard  to  bear. 
It  is  now  all  different. 

One  month  later  she  wrote :  ' '  It  is  now 
two  months  since  my  first  visit  to  you, 
and  only  two  or  three  times  have  I 
suffered  as  I  did  before  and  those  days 
brought  less  of  stress  and  exhaustion." 

Under  special  strain  early  in  July  there 
was  a  brief  relapse;  but  on  July  nth  she 
received  a  quieting  treatment,  and  July 
13th  wrote  me:  "I  have  had  almost  no 
further  trouble.  It  is  as  if  you  put  out 
your  hand  and  turning  off  one  current  of 


A  Year's  Results  47 

disquiet  and  unrest,  had  turned  on  an- 
other of  coolness  and  of  balm. "  Inas- 
much as  the  heart  pain  is  lessened  both 
in  frequency  and  intensity  and  can  be 
completely  controlled  by  suggestion  and 
faith  as  it  never  was  by  medicine,  and 
the  mental  distress  accompanying  it  has 
practically  disappeared,  and  two  physi- 
cians have  recently  pronounced  her  as  in 
excellent  condition,  and  there  is  evident  to 
all  who  know  the  woman  marked  improve- 
ment in  her  general  well  being,  the  case 
is  placed  among  those  "much  improved. " 
Case  4. — May  1st,  a  young  man  of 
thirty  came  into  my  study  with  the 
saddest  face  and  saddest  story  I  have 
heard  in  many  a  day.  With  a  brother 
and  a  sister  nervous  invalids  of  long 
standing  there  was  little  to  encourage 
him  when  he  fell  ill  two  years  ago.  To 
neurasthenia  were  added  certain  local 
ailments  which  disqualified  him  for  busi- 
ness and  for  social  intercourse  and  iso- 
lated from  his  kind  one  of  the  most 
companionable  and  most  finely  sensi- 
tised  of    natures.     Several  doctors  had 


48      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

failed  to  help  him.  None  offered 
him  much  hope  of  restoration  to  good 
health. 

Though  accepting  his  family  doctor's 
judgment  that  there  was  no  organic 
trouble,  I  was  convinced  on  close  inquiry 
that  the  diagnosis  of  a  stomach  specialist 
was  needed,  and  at  my  request  he  con- 
sulted one  of  national  repute.  This  was 
the  diagnosis  which  the  specialist  sent 
me  within  a  week:  "An  excessively  acid 
stomach,  three  times  greater  than  the 
normal.  When  the  hydrochloric  acid 
is  in  excess  we  have  a  neurosis,  due  to 
mental  nervous  causes  and  not  to  organic 
change."  With  the  diagnosis  a  pre- 
scription and  a  dietary  scheme  were 
provided  and  the  Emmanuel  treatment 
was  earnestly  suggested. 

Once  a  week  until  June  16th  he  received 
the  quieting  treatment,  faithfully  took  the 
medicine  prescribed,  and  lived  up  to 
the  dietary  scheme.  The  improvement 
was  immediate  and  rapid,  and  even 
though  for  some  weeks  he  was  unable 
in  his  summer  camp  to  diet  scrupulously 


A  Year's  Results  49 

the  improvement  steadily  continued.  Au- 
gust 9th  he  wrote  me: 

In  spite  of  my  wonderful  improvement 
there  have  been  half -hours  up  here  when  I  have 
ached  for  a  half-hour  in  your  study,  and  my 
desire  for  soothing  and  restoring  rest  amounted 
to  a  craving  of  severe  intensity;  but  there  have 
been  moments  when  I  could  have  laughed  aloud 
in  thinking  of  the  change  which  has  come  over  me. 

His  mother  also  writes  that  "he  is  on 
the  road  to  complete  recovery  "  and  when 
I  saw  him  in  October  he  was  the  very 
embodiment  of  robust  manhood. 

Case  5. — Four  years  ago  a  successful 
commercial  traveller,  fifty  years  of  age, 
was  stricken  with  the  psychasthenia  of 
monophobia.  He  feared  to  leave  his 
house  without  his  wife.  For  four  years 
she  went  with  him  everywhere.  Even 
with  his  wife  he  never  ventured  on  a 
steamship  or  took  a  long  railroad  journey. 
His  capacity  for  business  was  impaired. 
He  spent  large  sums  of  money  seeking 
medical  relief.  From  last  January  until 
June  he  was  at  his  worst,  and  June  16th 
his  wife,  with  the  approval  of  his  doctor, 
brought  him,  a  neurasthenic  wreck,  to  me. 


50     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Before  I  could  begin  the  treatment  I 
had  not  only  to  gain  his  confidence  but 
also  by  an  enthusiastic  domination  of 
his  mind  to  lift  him  out  of  his  depression. 
After  three  treatments  he  came  June 
26th,  alone  for  the  first  time  in  four  years 
from  the  city  in  which  he  lives  to  the 
clinic  in  Northampton.  The  second  week 
in  July  he  took  a  long  journey  with  his 
wife  including  one  night  on  a  steamer, 
attended  to  much  business  with  a  con- 
fidence and  efficiency  he  had  not  had  in 
years,  sent  his  wife  home  a  half  day 
ahead,  and  travelled  the  last  hundred 
miles  alone  with  a  sense  of  freedom  from 
all  fear  that  filled  his  heart  with  joy. 
He  gained  twelve  pounds  in  weight  the 
first  month  of  his  treatment.  He  is 
now  travelling  almost  constantly  without 
his  wife,  despatching  business  with  zest 
as  he  has  not  done  before  in  years,  and 
though  he  still  has  attacks  of  depression 
I  am  venturing,  with  the  hearty  approval 
of  the  doctor,  to  place  him  among  the 
"much  improved." 

At  this  stage  of  the  Emmanuel  work 


A  Year's  Results  51 

there  are  perhaps  as  many  lessons  to  be 
learned  through  a  study  of  the  failures 
as  of  the  successes.  Passing  from  the 
two  instances  in  which,  though  no  dam- 
age mental  or  physical  was  done,  the 
fault  was  altogether  mine,  I  hasten  to 
three  cases  where  the  responsibility  of 
the  failure  to  improve  belongs  elsewhere : 

The  first  was  a  case  of  obstinate  ob- 
sessions in  which  there  was,  under  treat- 
ment, intermittent  improvement  followed 
by  cessation  of  all  progress  doubtless 
due,  as  Dr.  Upson  has  made  clear  in  his 
Insomnia  and  Nerve  Strain,  to  some 
dental  lesion.  The  treatment  has  been 
discontinued  pending  the  visit  of  the 
patient  to  a  dentist  whose  threshold  he 
has  not  crossed  in  many  years. 

The  second  was  supposed  to  be  a  case 
of  neurasthenia  accompanied  by  delu- 
sions, but  after  a  few  weeks  of  treatment, 
which  included  daily  visits  from  a  doctor 
and  during  which  the  sleep  average  was 
raised  and  the  general  health  somewhat 
improved,  there  could  be  no  longer  any 
doubt  that  the  man,  was  suffering  from 


52      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

involutional  melancholia  which  was  be- 
yond Emmanuel  treatment. 

The  third  case  was  one  of  neurasthenia 
expressed  both  in  local  pains  and  in 
profound  physical  and  mental  depression. 
The  inability  of  the  patient,  a  woman  of 
fifty,  to  keep  her  appointments  for  treat- 
ment made  it  impossible  for  me  to  serve 
her  with  that  sense  of  confidence  which 
must  be  in  the  worker's  mind  if  he  is  to  kin- 
dle faith  in  the  unhappy  sufferer's  mind. 

The  fourth  case  is  that  of  an  aged 
woman  suffering  from  what  appeared 
to  be  ordinary  hypochondria,  but  which 
after  the  diagnosis  of  two  physicians 
proved  to  be  well-established  senility. 
The  treatment  for  hypochondria  did 
bring  immediate  results,  but  there  was  a 
relapse  and  as  soon  as  the  true  diagnosis 
was  reported  I  discontinued  treatment 
much  to  the  regret  of  the  unhappy  wo- 
man, who  still  thinks  she  can  be  helped. 

The  deeper  significance  of  the  statistics 
will  appear  in  the  consideration  now  to 
follow  of  the  treatment  of  the  representa- 
tive ailments  indicated  in  the  diagram. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  TREATMENT  OF  THE  NERVOUS 

NEURASTHENIA"  is  a  modern 
word.  Its  archetype  was  nervous- 
ness, and  even  the  word  "nervousness" 
is  nowhere  found  in  Shakespeare.  As  Dr. 
Weir  Mitchell  has  reminded  us,  when 
Shakespeare  uses  the  word  nerve  at  all 
he  uses  it  as  a  synonym  for  sinew,  and 
in  the  language  of  the  street  to  describe 
a  man  as  having  nerve  is  still  more 
Shakespearean  than  modern. 

When  Beard  began  a  generation  ago 
to  offer  proofs  that  neurasthenia  was 
rising  to  the  baleful  dignity  of  a  popular 
disease  in  America  where  it  has  achieved 
peculiar  pre-eminence,  "there  was,"  he 
says,  "scarcely  a  responsive  voice  in  any 
country,"  and  even  when  his  book  on 

53 


54     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Neurasthenia  appeared  in  1880  the 
strongest,  most  numerous  and  compre- 
hensive endorsements  of  it  came  from 
Germany  and  England  rather  than 
America. 

Now  at  least  forty  per  cent.,  thinks 
Dr.  Cabot,  of  the  patients  who  come 
to  the  general  practitioner  are  suffering 
from  neurasthenia  in  one  form  or  an- 
other, and  if  the  current  impression  to  be 
gained  from  reading  medical  journals  or 
from  casual  conversation  with  reputable 
physicians  be  trustworthy,  the  good  family 
doctor  would  rather  have  a  broken  arm 
to  mend  or  a  mild  typhoid  to  treat  than 
neurasthenia. 

For  scientific  definition  of  it  the  reader 
is  directed  to  his  family  doctor.  The 
author's  business  is  to  give  such  informa- 
tion about  it  as  the  average  educated 
man  may  be  expected  to  possess,  and 
therefore  he  passes  on  the  word  of  Dr. 
Osier  that  neurasthenia  is  simply  "weak- 
ness or  exhaustion  of  the  nervous  sys- 
tem."6 

Sometimes   it  assumes  one  form    and 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      55 

sometimes  another.  Usually  the  suf- 
ferer describes  herself,  for  she  is  oftener 
a  woman  than  a  man,  as  nervous,  by 
which  she  usually  means  that  mentally 
she  is  emotional,  excitable,  vacillating,  in- 
decisive, depressed,  restless,  despondent, 
irritable,  and  so  easily  thrown  out  of 
plumb  that  every  detail  in  life  lacks 
proportion,  fear  and  worry  paralyse  her 
powers,  and  even  "the  grasshopper  is  a 
burden."  Physically  she  suffers  from  ills 
too  numerous  for  description,  but  the 
catalogue  frequently  includes  general  de- 
bility, loss  of  weight,  sleeplessness,  local 
aches,  sensations  of  fulness,  flushes  in 
the  head — even  when  there  is  no  act- 
ual headache,  throbbing,  pain,  palpita- 
tion or  irregularity  of  the  heart,  and 
various  disturbances  of  the  digestion,  the 
liver,  the  kidneys,  and  other  organs  of 
the  body.  At  its  worst  the  nervousness 
becomes  so  serious  that  there  is  chorea, 
hysteria,  hypochondria,  or  psychasthenia 
in  which  the  mental  disturbance  outweighs 
all  physical  derangement. 

The  causes  of  nervousness  are  as  numer- 


56      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

ous  as  its  symptoms.  Some  whose  teeth 
have  been  set  on  edge  by  the  sour  grapes 
their  ancestors  ate  start  life  handicapped 
by  lack  of  what  we  call  "nerve  force" 
and  furnish  a  considerable  proportion  of 
the  neurasthenic  through  failure  to  dis- 
cover what  the  limitations  are  of  their 
nerve  possibilities.  Some  have  a  nervous 
adult  life  because  their  nervous  system 
was  not  protected  in  childhood  from 
shocks,  from  over-stimulation,  from  the 
formation  of  erroneous  habits,  and  from 
various  local  weaknesses  which  are  easy  to 
correct  at  the  beginning  and  sometimes 
impossible  in  later  life.  Some — perhaps 
far  more  than  we  imagine — turn  neuras- 
thenic in  one  way  or  another  just  because 
the  age  in  which  we  live  is  so  tense  and 
so  alert,  so  complicated  and  so  strenuous, 
that  there  is  in  consequence  more  wear 
and  tear  upon  the  nerves  than  in  earlier 
and  simpler  days.  Some  grow  nervous 
as  a  result  of  accident  or  overwork  or 
organic  trouble  of  one  sort  or  another, 
or  from  worry  and  its  unholy  brood  of 
children. 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous       57 

It  used  to  be  believed  that  only  the  rich, 
the  well-to-do,  and  the  over-refined  dis- 
cover at  last  that  they  have  nerves. 
Now  we  know  that  nervousness  recognises 
no  class  distinctions.  The  shop  girl  and 
the  farmer's  wife,  the  student  and  the 
factory  operative,  the  doctor  and  "my 
lady  at  the  height  of  the  season"  have 
"nerves"  these  days,  and  sometimes  in 
the  lower  strata  of  society  neurasthenia 
is  more  serious  because  the  victim  gets  no 
sympathy  from  those  around  and  can 
neither  afford  the  services  of  the  high- 
priced  neurologist  nor  the  "rest  cure" 
in  a  good  hospital,  where  a  private  room 
must  be  had  if  the  cure  is  to  prove  effec- 
tive. The  author  knows  of  several 
cases  of  this  kind  in  Northampton  which 
are  apparently  beyond  the  reach  of  help, 
and  he  therefore  rejoices  with  others  in 
the  establishment  by  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot 
in  1905  of  the  Social  Service  Department 
of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital  for 
the  treatment  of  such  cases. 

The  treatment  of  neurasthenia  is  too 
familiar  to  require  elaborate  description. 


58     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

On  one  thing  all  who  have  the  right  to 
speak  are  now  agreed, — that  usually 
any  treatment  to  be  helpful  must  have 
regard  to  the  "whole  man."  There  is 
a  place  for  drugs.  Every  wise  doctor 
knows  when  to  use  his  strychnia  or  his 
nux  vomica.  Sometimes  drugs  alone 
suffice  to  correct  a  physical  disturbance. 
The  oculist,  the  dentist,  the  stomach 
specialist,  the  nose  and  throat  specialist, 
or  the  orthopaedist  can  remove  local 
difficulties  which  stand  in  the  way  of  well 
nerves.  Not  only  have  I  in  my  clinic 
turned  back  with  immediate  results  to 
one  specialist  or  another,  nervous  cases 
sent  to  me  by  some  general  practitioner 
who  was  sure  the  case  was  one  for  mental 
or  for  spiritual  help  alone,  but  in  one  in- 
stance a  lifelong  invalid  has  found  prac- 
tically normal  health  because  primarily 
at  my  suggestion  she  sought  for  the  first 
time  and  received  the  help  of  dentist, 
oculist,  and  orthopaedist,  though  several 
general  practitioners  had  never  made  the 
suggestion  that  she  see  a  specialist  at 
all. 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      59 

But  in  general  in  the  treatment  of 
neurasthenia  the  words  which  Dr.  Osier 
wrote  in  1891  still  stand  unshaken: 
"Medicines  are  of  little  avail. "7  If  any 
confirmation  of  this  is  needed  it  is  per- 
haps suggested  in  the  following  statistics 8 
furnished  by  the  Out-patient  Department 
of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital: 

Number    Number  of  Visits  Exceed 
Year  of  Visits     Prescrip-      Prescriptions 

tions  by — 

1902 88,868  58,177  30.691 

1903 95.728  55.285  40,443 

1904 106,175  53.321  52,854 

1905 110,631  49.793  60,838 

i9°6 107,063  43.674  63,389 

The  patient  should  turn  first  of  all  to 
those  who  understand  the  methods  of 
Dr.  Weir  Mitchell.  His  treatment  by 
"seclusion,  rest,  massage,  full  feeding, 
and  electricity"  was,  according  to  its 
eminent  exponent  in  England,  Dr.  William 
Playfair,  speaking  in  1888,  "the  greatest 
practical  advance  in  medicine  "  made  in  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  But  many  doc- 
tors, there  is  too  much  reason  to  believe, 
who  recommend  the  "rest  cure"  fail  to 
add   to   it   the   essential  on   which   Dr. 


60     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Mitchell  says,  in  the  following  words,  the 
permanence  of  the  cure  depends : 

All  the  moral  uses  of  rest  and  isolation  and 
change  of  habits  are  not  obtained  by  merely 
insisting  on  the  physical  conditions  needed  to 
effect  these  ends.  If  the  physician  has  the 
force  of  character  required  to  secure  the  con- 
fidence and  respect  of  his  patient,  he  has  also 
much  more  in  his  power,  and  should  have  the 
tact  to  seize  the  proper  occasions  to  direct  the 
thoughts  of  his  patients  to  the  lapse  from  duties 
to  others  and  to  the  selfishness  which  a  life  of 
invalidism  is  apt  to  bring  about.  Such  moral 
medication  belongs  to  the  higher  sphere  of  the 
doctor's  duties,  and  if  he  means  to  cure  his 
patient  permanently  he  cannot  afford  to  neglect 
them.9 

But  allowing  that  the  "  rest  cure"  in  all 
its  fulness  is  in  many  cases  indicated, 
three  facts  in  many  cases  still  remain  to 
be  considered: 

i.  That  many  doctors,  like  many 
ministers,  do  not  have  the  "force  of 
character  required  to  secure  the  confi- 
dence and  respect  of  their  patients" 
and  in  consequence  depend  on  the  "rest 
cure"  without  its  essential  accompani- 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      61 

ment  or  on  medicine  as  a  mere  placebo 
where  medicine  in  any  form  may  be  out 
of  place. 

2.  There  are  many  people,  perhaps 
the  majority  of  nervous  women,  who  are 
both  unable  so  to  command  conditions  in 
their  home  as  to  take  the  "rest  cure" 
and  to  afford  the  expense  which  it  entails 
and  also  to  spend  the  money  and  the 
time  required  in  a  hospital.  For  such 
either  more  emphasis  must  be  laid  on 
the  mental  and  the  spiritual  help  Dr. 
Mitchell  earnestly  commends  or  they 
must  fall  back  upon  medicine  where 
medicine  is  not  truly  indicated.  It  is 
with  the  view  of  dealing  with  such  cases 
that  Dr.  Cabot  is  making  his  important 
experiment  with  the  Social  Service  De- 
partment of  the  Massachusetts  General 
Hospital  which  is  steadily  reducing  the 
number  of  prescriptions  given  to  the 
nervous  and  rapidly  increasing  the  num- 
ber of  social  visits  and  is  adding  to  the 
doctor's  expert  service  the  human  touch 
of  the  social  worker  who  goes  into  the 
neurasthenic's  home  "to  reach  the  hun- 


62     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

dred  and  one  outside  influences  which 
always  play  so  important  a  part  in  the 
health  of  a  man. " 

3.  Disguise  it  as  we  will,  there  is  a 
growing  conviction  that  the  "  work  cure  " 
is  in  itself  more  useful  in  many  instances 
than  the  "rest  cure."  Half  the  neuras- 
thenics who  come  to  Dr.  Cabot  are,  he 
believes,  "suffering"  more  for  lack  of 
work  than  for  lack  of  rest.  Whether  as 
Dr.  Cabot  thinks  we  are  in  the  future 
likely  to  hear  less  and  less  of  the  rest 
cure,10  we  shall  undoubtedly  hear  more 
and  more  of  the  work  cure,  if  for  no 
other  reason  than  the  circumstance  that 
many  nervous  people  cannot  take  the 
rest  cure  at  all  and  have  learned  from 
experience  that  congenial  work  done 
moderately  in  the  right  spirit  does  have 
a  soothing  and  a  recreative  effect  on  the 
whole  system. 

At  this  point  there  would  seem  to  be  a 
place,  however  small,  for  the  Emmanuel 
movement.  Though  ultimately,  after 
psychotherapy  has  become  fixed  in  the 
curriculum  of  every  medical  college  in 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      63 

the  land,  physicians  who  now  employ  it 
casually  and  with  some  lack  often  evident 
of  self-confidence,  will  make  systematic 
and  scientific  use  of  it,  neurasthenia  in 
a  well-developed  form  will  probably  be 
treated  less  and  less  in  the  Emmanuel 
clinic  which  is  likely  to  be  busy  with  pre- 
ventive therapeutics,  it  is  inevitable  that 
at  this  stage  many  should  seek  the 
Emmanuel  clinic  who  have  been  depend- 
ent hitherto  upon  the  family  doctor 
alone. 

Every  Emmanuel  clinic  works  within 
the  limitations  set  by  scientific  medicine. 
But  every  Emmanuel  worker  follows 
his  own  temperament  and  training  in 
the  application  of  the  principle.  In 
describing  my  methods  I  am  well  aware 
that  others  may  attack  the  problem  some- 
what differently,  but  I  am  sure  the  same 
principle  will  in  every  case  be  generally 
recognised. 

When  a  neurasthenic  comes  to  St. 
John's  clinic  to  apply  for  treatment,  she 
is  made  to  feel  at  home  in  the  reception 
room  by  a  mature  and  cheerful  Christian 


64     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

woman,  who  has  read  much  upon  the 
general  subject  and  has  tested  the  Em- 
manuel principle  in  her  own  experience 
with  such  success  as  to  give  to  her  words 
of  cheer  a  conviction  they  could  not  other- 
wise have.  While  the  applicant  waits, 
there  is  abundant  literature  that  bears 
upon  the  subject  for  her  to  read,  and 
when  at  last  she  is  admitted  to  my  study, 
with  its  soft  colouring  and  open  fire,  she 
finds  herself,  if  testimony  can  be  trusted, 
in  an  atmosphere  in  which  it  is  seldom 
difficult  to  speak  freely  of  the  purpose 
of  her  visit. 

If  she  brings  with  her  a  letter  from  a 
reputable  doctor  testifying  that  the  case 
is  one  distinctly  for  Emmanuel  treatment, 
the  way  is  open  for  a  frank  discussion. 
If  she  comes  without  a  letter  she  is  sent 
to  any  one  of  several  Northampton  doc- 
tors for  diagnosis.  After  that  the  way 
is  open  for  consideration,  usually  with 
the  doctor's  help,  of  the  important 
question  as  to  the  purely  physical  origin 
of  the  neurasthenia.  Neurasthenia  oc- 
casioned by  simple  exhaustion  of  the 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous       65 

body  or  by  some  damage  to  the  physical 
organism  needs  something  more,  and 
sometimes  other,  than  Emmanuel  treat- 
ment. Such  cases  I  habitually  advise 
to  seek  the  judgment  of  yet  another  doc- 
tor, a  neurologist  if  possible,  and  to  be 
guided  by  his  counsel,  likely  to  be  the 
"rest  cure"  if  that  is  practicable.  If, 
however,  that  is  not  practicable,  I  enlist 
the  co-operation  of  the  local  doctor,  work 
under  his  direction  if  he  will  allow,  and 
supplement  his  treatment  in  any  case 
not  merely  by  faith  but  also  by  specific 
suggestions  to  build  up  in  her  the  utmost 
confidence  in  him.  In  a  few  instances 
where  the  patient  had  to  choose  between 
no  treatment  at  all  and  this  treatment 
in  which  the  doctor  was  re-enforced,  but 
in  no  sense  supplanted  by  the  minister, 
some  astonishing  results  were  obtained. 
One  case  deserves  special  mention.  A 
woman,  aged  forty-four,  came  to  me  Sep- 
tember 2 2d,  for  treatment  for  general 
nervous  weakness.  She  was  born,  she 
said,  without  the  average  vitality.  She 
never    remembered    when    she    was    as 


66     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

strong  as  other  girls.  She  had  had  sev- 
eral breakdowns  beginning  in  her  college 
days.  She  had  hurt  her  spine  by  a  fall 
some  years  ago  and  more  recently  had 
torn  some  ligaments  in  another  fall. 
There  were  habitual  physical  weakness, 
faulty  digestion,  poor  appetite,  mental 
depression,  fixed  ideas,  headache,  pain 
over  the  left  eye,  and  an  almost  constant 
pain  at  each  extremity  of  the  spine. 
Before  her  treatment  could  be  fairly 
started,  I  had  her  see  an  oculist  who  re- 
lieved the  eye-strain,  an  orthopaedic 
specialist  under  whose  care  the  spinal 
pain  completely  disappeared,  and  then  I 
worked  with  the  approval  and  counsel  of 
a  good  physician  at  the  simple  problem 
of  helping  her  to  take  and  keep  an  opti- 
mistic attitude  toward  her  ills  and  toward 
the  world  in  general.  She  read  many 
uplifting  books  at  my  suggestion,  lived 
a  systematised  religious  life,  and  learned 
in  our  weekly  interviews  covering  three 
months,  how  to  manage  her  nervous 
capital  without  strain  or  fret.  She  is  not 
as  yet  entirely  well,   but  she  is  much 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      67 

improved  in  every  way  and  now  knows 
how  so  to  live  her  inner  life  in  self-un- 
consciousness and  in  such  helpfulness 
to  others  as  to  lift  her  out  of  the  ranks 
of  the  invalid  and  to  make  her  an  efficient 
worker  within  her  limitations.  What 
possible  objection  either  from  the  stand- 
point of  medicine  or  religion  there  can 
be  to  such  treatment  of  a  neurasthenic, 
it  is  difficult  and  I  think  impossible  for 
the  reader  to  imagine.  It  was  practically 
an  instance  of  a  clergyman  proving  a  help- 
ful counsellor  as  well  as  minister  to  a 
person  who  was  not  in  a  doctor's  care  at 
all  and  had  never  had  before  such  selfless 
counsel;  or  if  she  had  had  it  she  had  not 
been  impressed  by  it. 

If,  however,  the  neurasthenic  is  a 
simple  case  in  which  the  physician  who 
diagnoses  it  is  sure  the  need  is  one  which 
I  can  supply,  the  case  is  usually  treated 
thus:  There  is  at  the  first  treatment  a 
friendly  talk.  Abundant  time  is  given 
to  it.  Every  fact  or  circumstance  which 
can  throw  any  light  upon  the  patient's 
condition  is  brought  out.    There  can  be 


68     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

no  more  reticences  in  the  clinic  than  in 
the  confessional.11  Any  withholding  of 
confidences  necessary  to  my  perfect  un- 
derstanding of  the  situation  of  necessity 
closes  the  discussion.  Two  patients  who 
recently  refused  to  answer  pertinent 
questions,  which  happened  incidentally 
to  involve  considerations  of  character, 
were  in  all  courtesy  and  kindliness  sent 
away. 

The  next  step  is  to  inspire  new  hope  in 
hearts  often  hopeless.  This  I  do  by 
words  based  on  the  doctor's  diagnosis.  I 
always  add,  when,  as  is  usual,  I  can  do 
so  with  veracity,  "I  have  seen  cases  as 
bad  or  worse  than  yours  recover."  A 
few  of  my  patients,  who  are  most  ap- 
preciative, allow  me  to  refer  to  them 
the  new-comers  who  need  the  word  of 
those  who  have  the  right  from  personal 
experience  to  speak.  There  is  a  little 
book  called  A  Letter  of  Hope  written  by 
one  whose  faith  soared  above  tuberculosis 
as  well  as  neurasthenia,  which  has  il- 
lustrated and  confirmed  my  words  in  many 
a  case.    The  battle  is  half  won  when  a 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      69 

neurasthenic's  faith  is  really  alive  and 
energetic.  I  usually,  though  not  always, 
close  the  first  interview  by  having  the 
patient  sit  relaxed  in  a  Morris  chair  with 
eyes  closed  while  I  assure  her  that  she 
will  be  well  and  frequently  preach  her  a 
little  sermon  in  a  soothing  tone  about 
God's  power  to  make  us  well.  See  The 
Art  of  Natural  Sleep,  pp.  54  ff.,  for  one 
sermon  which  I  have  found  in  almost 
every  case  effective  in  clearing  the  mind 
of  its  last  vestiges  of  distress,  depression, 
or  discouragement. 

It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  for  patients 
who  at  first  protested  that  they  were  not 
religious  to  find  themselves  profoundly 
religious  after  their  first  treatment,  and 
in  my  confirmation  class  this  winter 
there  are  some  who  have  in  this  first 
quieting  treatment  discovered  that  at 
the  very  heart  of  us  we  are  all  religious, 
even  when  we  know  it  not. 

One  of  the  most  impressive  experiences 
in  my  whole  ministry  followed  the  second 
quieting  treatment  of  a  good  man  who 
in  the  interests  of  a  purely  superficial 


7©     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

agnosticism,  made  a  year  or  two  a 
sacrifice  in  his  worldly  prospects  which 
would  now  be  unnecessary.  He  had 
come  in  great  discouragement,  even  on 
his  second  visit.  I  spent  an  hour  in  the 
earnest  effort  to  lift  him  out  of  his  de- 
pression. Then  while  he  was  relaxed 
in  body  and  quiet  in  mind,  but  per- 
fectly awake  to  every  word  I  uttered, 
I  preached  him  the  sincerest  sermon  I 
could  preach  about  God's  loving  interest 
in  him,  and  as  I  finished  I  heard  him 
whispering  to  himself  snatches  of  the 
Psalms  which  he  had  learned  in  boyhood 
and  in  which  frequently  occurred  the 
words:  "  Orest  in  the  Lord ;  wait  patiently 
for  him,  and  he  shall  give  thee  thy 
heart's  desire. "  Then  he  bade  me  again 
repeat  some  of  the  prayers  which  I  had 
said  and  in  which  most  conspicuous  were 
two  from  the  Evening  Prayer  Service  of 
the  Episcopal  Church.  It  is  too  early 
yet  to  make  predictions  as  to  his  com- 
plete recovery,  but  I  know  that  his  sad 
soul  has  found  new  comfort  and  that  he 
knows  more  surely  than  he   did   before 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous       71 

where  to  find  "the  shadow  of  a  great  rock 
in  a  weary  land. " 

As  the  patient  comes  from  week  to 
week,  we  always  have  a  talk  together 
about  the  deeper  things  of  life.  Little 
problems  of  the  home  are  brought  to  me 
for  help  in  their  solution.  There  are  at 
least  a  half-dozen  homes  in  New  England 
that  would  ere  this  have  been  broken  up 
by  the  unfaithfulness  of  husband  or  of 
wife  but  for  the  visit  to  my  clinic  of 
some  woman  or  some  man  made  neuras- 
thenic by  heartsickness.  Mothers  and 
daughters  have  learned  how  to  get  on 
better  with  each  other.  Friends  es- 
tranged have  become  reunited  as  some 
neurasthenic  grown  unduly  sensitive  or 
exacting  has  learned  in  the  clinic  how  to 
see  straight  into  life's  relationships.  Dif- 
ficulties of  all  sorts  have  been  smoothed 
out,  and  it  has  been  a  joy  unspeakable 
to  see  tired  nerves  rested  as  the  mental 
strain  has  disappeared  in  all  the  spiritual 
intimacy  of  the  clinic. 

Suggestion  has  been  used  with  all  the 
earnestness  of  which  I  am  capable  for 


72      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  removal  of  some  of  the  more  stubborn 
of  the  incidental  symptoms  of  neuras- 
thenia. Hypnosis  in  its  scientific  sense 
has  neither  been  necessary  nor  has  it 
been  attempted  save  once  or  twice  in 
instances  of  "functional  affections  of  the 
nervous  system  of  a  temporary  character 
or  sympathetic  irritations  of  a  weak 
affinity, "  in  which,  on  the  authority 
of  Weir  Mitchell,  "there  is  a  place  for  it. " 
The  preparation  for  the  direct  sugges- 
tion of  the  disappearance  of  the  special 
symptom  is  nothing  but  the  relaxation 
of  the  body  and  the  quieting  of  the  mind. 
The  patient  is  conscious  throughout.  He 
can  open  his  eyes  if  he  wills  to  do  so. 
He  is  as  much  awake  as  I  am  and  is 
in  exactly  the  mental  situation  of  the 
attentive  listener  to  a  sermon  who  in 
earnestness  informs  the  preacher  after- 
wards: "I  heard  every  word  you  said," 
or  "I  could  have  listened  all  night  to 
you."  Unless  all  suggestion,  even  in 
casual  conversation  in  the  social  circle 
where  there  is  self-forgetful  and  all- 
engrossing  interest  in  the  speaker's  words, 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      73 

be  hypnotism,  then  direct  suggestion  in 
my  treatment  of  specific  symptoms  in 
neurasthenia,  cannot,  as  Dr.  Cabot  says, 
be  called  hypnosis. 

I  have  had ,  however,  one  remarkable  ex- 
ception, though  what  seemed  to  be  a  light 
hypnosis  may  have  been  normal  sleep. 
On  December  9th,  a  mother  brought  to  me 
at  the  suggestion  of  an  excellent  phy- 
sician, her  seventeen-year-old  daughter 
to  be  treated  for  a  frontal  headache  of 
some  three  years'  standing.  All  that 
the  famous  oculist  and  expert  dentist 
could  do  to  relieve  the  headache  had 
been  done  in  vain  some  months  ago. 
The  headache  still  persisted.  A  local 
doctor  here  was  convinced  after  failing  to 
relieve  it  that  though  it  may  once  have 
had  a  physical  basis,  the  headache  was 
now  purely  one  of  the  imagination. 
The  mental  habit  of  expecting  the  head- 
ache each  morning  had  grown  too  strong 
to  be  broken  by  the  physician's  agencies. 

A  generous  doctor  and  wise  mother 
before  she  came  to  me  saturated  her  mind 
with  faith  that  I  could  at  once  relieve  the 


74     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

headache.  She  came  into  my  study  with 
the  certainty  that  now  at  last  she  was  to 
have  relief.  With  her  mother  present,  I 
had  her  seat  herself  in  the  Morris  chair, 
told  her  to  relax  her  muscles  by  an  effort 
of  the  will  and  rhythmic  breathing,  and  to 
grow  quiet  in  mind.  When  by  and  by 
as  I  spoke  soothing  words  to  her  she 
slowly  closed  her  eyes  I  suggested  for 
five  minutes  that  the  pain  would  dis- 
appear, that  God  would  set  her  free  from 
it;  then  when  I  changed  to  the  con- 
versational tone  and  told  her  to  open  her 
eyes  she  opened  them  as  one  who  has 
been  sleeping  and  exclaimed  with  joy, 
' '  The  pain  is  gone ! " 

Two  days  later  the  pain  returned  but 
yielded  once  again  to  my  suggestions  and 
after  five  more  treatments  completely 
disappeared  to  return  but  once  more  in 
the  six  weeks  which  have  since  intervened. 
Whether  she  fell  into  a  normal  sleep  or 
into  a  light  hypnotic  sleep  in  all  the  com- 
fort of  the  Morris  chair  before  the  open 
fire,  I  do  not  know.  The  one  point  is 
that  it  was  unto  her  according  to  her 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous       75 

faith  and  that  what  medicine  had,  after 
two  years'  trial  failed  to  do,  suggestion 
couched  in  spiritual  terms  had  at  once 
accomplished. 

Nothing  can  be  more  important  than 
the  establishment  of  the  habit  of  self 
re-education  and  self-help.  As  I  write 
these  words  a  letter  comes  which  proves 
that  patients,  who  are  the  best  witnesses, 
share  with  me  this  judgment.  "I  am 
much  impressed,"  the  writer  says,  "with 
the  re-education  idea.  The  bare  possibil- 
ity of  straightening  up  one's  whole 
character  is  inspiring."  From  the  first 
treatment  till  the  last  I  work  with  this 
in  view.     My  method  is  three-fold: 

1.  To  endeavour  to  make  the  patient 
one  with  God.  The  prayer  life  is  not 
simply  commended;  it  is  in  most  cases 
definitely  prescribed.  Men  who  have 
not  prayed  since  at  their  mother's  knee 
they  said  their  "Now  I  lay  me  down  to 
sleep"  now  pray  as  regularly  as  they  eat 
and  sleep.  Unless  the  patient  is  already 
habituated  to  a  devotional  book,  I 
suggest   my  own  little   book  of   Family 


76      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Prayers12  because  of  its  simplicity  and 
also  because  it  contains  references  to 
definite  passages  of  Scripture,  prayers 
chiefly  from  the  prayer-book  of  the 
Episcopal  Church  for  every  morning  and 
evening  of  the  week,  a  lectionary  for  the 
entire  Bible,  and  special  prayers  for 
various  needs.  In  addition  I  suggest 
Bishop  Brent's  With  God  in  Prayer,  the 
famous  devotional  books  like  that  of 
Brother  Lawrence  and  St.  Francis  and 
the  more  modern  books  of  Henry  Drum- 
mond,  Maltbie  D.  Babcock,  J.  R.  Miller, 
and  Anna  Robertson  Brown  Lindsay. 
{See  list  at  end  of  volume.) 

2.  I  map  out  for  each  patient  a 
definite  course  of  reading  designed  to 
strengthen  his  faith  at  every  point  in 
psychotherapy  in  general  as  well  as  in 
the  Emmanuel  movement.  The  journal 
of  Psychotherapy  is13  always  in  the  recep- 
tion room.  Religion  and  Medicine  and 
the  other  Emmanuel  publications  and 
Good  Housekeeping  and  the  Ladies'  Home 
Journal  with  their  Emmanuel  articles  are 
commended.       The    books    of     Dubois 


vr* 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      77 

and  Schofield  help  many.  The  New 
Thought  books  of  Horatio  Dresser,  Henry 
Wood,  Ralph  Waldo  Trine,  and  George 
Brodie  Patterson  are  of  inestimable  serv- 
ice in  some  cases,  and  they  have  fortun- 
ately just  been  supplemented  by  the 
latest  and  best  book  of  Stanton  Davis 
Kirkham.  My  own  book  on  The  Art  of 
Natural  Sleep  contains  such  detailed  direc- 
tions for  the  wholesome  cure  of  sleep- 
lessness that  now  in  many  cases  it  alone 
suffices  to  relieve  even  stubborn  cases 
of  insomnia  after  one  Emmanuel  treat- 
ment. Dubois's  Psychic  Treatment  of 
Nervous  Disorders  contains  one  chapter, 
twenty-three,  on  the  re-establishment  of 
the  intestinal  function  which  almost 
invariably,  especially  if  read  soon  after 
the  first  interview,  relieves  chronic  con- 
stipation. In  two  instances  in  which  the 
normal  functioning  of  the  intestines  was 
established  within  twenty-four  hours, 
there  had  been,  the  patients  reported,  not 
one  normal  movement  in  many  years. 
In  at  least  two  cases  of  complicated 
neurasthenia  induced  by  mental  causes 


78      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  reading  has  made  the  most  important 
contribution  to  the  cure. 

3.  Auto-suggestion  appears  to  some 
extremely  difficult  to  practise,  but  where 
there  is  a  will  it  never  is  impossible.  To 
establish  the  habit  of  making  to  oneself 
the  suggestions  received  in  the  clinic  and 
from  the  reading  is  encouraged  in  every 
way.  It  is  made  clear  to  every  one  who 
comes  that  the  most  suggestible  moments 
are  those  which  precede  sleep  and  follow 
it.  In  consequence  I  bid  each  patient 
sink  to  sleep  and  awake  out  of  sleep  with 
thoughts  of  hope  and  cheer  and  confi- 
dence. Sometimes  I  write  out  a  few  words 
for  repetition  not  only  morning  and 
evening  but  also  during  the  rest  period 
which  ought  to  follow  in  each  neuras- 
thenic case  the  noontime  meal.  In  one 
instance  the  improvement  was  so  rapid 
that  I  could  not  account  for  it  until  I 
learned  that  the  patient  had  not  merely 
repeated  the  suggestions  at  the  stated 
times,  but  had  also  pinned  the  paper  con- 
taining them  on  her  work  basket  and 
whispered  them  to  herself  at  frequent 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous       79 

intervals  the  whole  day  through  while 
she  was  at  her  work.  It  would  be,  I 
think,  impossible  to  overestimate  the 
value  of  auto-suggestion  intelligently  and 
faithfully  carried  out. 

There  are  perils  in  the  work  as  in  all 
work  where  there  are  nerves  and  hearts. 
Mrs.  Gumrnidge  comes,  of  course,  for 
treatment  and  presents  peculiar  dif- 
ficulties. My  rule  is  invariable.  If  at 
the  first  interview  I  find  any  difficulty  in 
winning  Mrs.  Gumrnidge  to  the  plan  she 
is  to  follow  if  she  is  to  recover,  I  never 
let  her  come  again.  If  I  do  have  some 
success  with  her  and  am  at  last  able  to 
discharge  her  much  improved,  I  no 
longer  let  her  count  herself  as  needing  my 
assistance,  though  I  require  reports  from 
her  at  seasons.  Gently  but  firmly  I 
decline  to  give  my  time  in  the  clinic 
or  out  to  one  whose  whole  problem  is  to 
learn  how  to  depend  upon  herself  and  not 
upon  the  one  who  teaches  her  self-help. 
Sometimes  I  have  had  to  hurt  her  feel- 
ings, but  always  for  her  good,  and  even 
in  reproof  the  Emmanuel  worker  learns 


80     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

to  use  that  smiling  impersonality  which 
takes  the  sting  away. 

Mrs.  Potiphar  has  not  as  yet  come  my 
way,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  she 
never  will.  The  attendant  is  always 
within  call  of  the  push-button  under  my 
desk.  She  is  frequently  summoned  to 
my  study,  and  always  enters  without 
knocking.  At  any  sign  of  uncontroll- 
able emotion  in  a  patient,  the  attend- 
ant is  summoned,  even  when  the  patient 
knows  it  not,  and  either  she  or  some 
one  else  is  always  present  in  certain 
types  of  treatment,  or  where  for  any 
reason  I  do  not  feel  that  I  altogether 
understand  the  patient's  temperament  or 
character.  The  wise  Emmanuel  worker 
safeguards  himself  exactly  as  the  wise 
neurologist  does  and  this  discounts  in  ad- 
vance some  of  the  perils  which,  as  Dr.  Buck- 
ley in  The  Century  Magazine  for  February 
points  out,  are  inherent  in  the  situation. 

At  this  stage  of  the  work  in  a  parish 
where  there  are  many  interests  with 
rightful  claims  upon  the  minister's  con- 
sideration, there  is  always  the  temptation 


Treatment  of  the  Nervous      81 

to  give  more  time  than  one  intends  to 
the  neurasthenic.  To  confine  the  clinic 
strictly  to  the  hours  set  aside  for  it  is 
impossible.  There  are  always  some  who 
must  come  out  of  hours.  The  very  self- 
centredness  which  the  disease  creates 
makes  even  the  most  considerate  patient 
now  and  then  forget  that  there  are  other 
duties  which  the  minister  must  faithfully 
discharge  if  he  is  to  conduct  the  clinic 
at  all.  My  telephone  rings  in  the  busiest 
morning.  My  Saturday  morning,  so  sa- 
cred to  the  man  who  is  to  preach  on 
Sunday,  has  been  more  than  once  in- 
vaded by  a  neurasthenic  who  thought 
she  simply  could  not  wait  till  the  next 
Tuesday.  I  have  been  called  up  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  to  save  a  man  who 
had  not  slept  for  sixty  hours  from  the 
suicide  he  feared  he  would  commit  in 
spite  of  all  his  efforts  to  control  himself. 
Three  months  of  giving  portions  of  two 
days  a  week  to  my  clinic  convinced  me 
that  to  make  due  allowance  for  the 
outside  calls  I  would  better  confine  my 
clinic  to  one  morning  every  week.     There 


82      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

are  usually  two  or  three  hours  more  each 
week  which  people  claim  who  need 
Emmanuel  treatment,  but  as  many  of 
them  are  members  of  my  own  parish  and 
others  come  for  spiritual  help  alone,  I  no 
longer  count  it  any  sacrifice  and  I  have 
learned  how  to  be  ruthless  in  resisting  all 
the  outside  pressure  brought  to  bear  on 
me  to  give  more  time  to  the  good  work. 

The  more  experience  I  gain  the  more 
evident  it  becomes  to  me  that  faith  has 
significance  in  lifting  many  neurasthenics 
out  of  their  ill  plight  and  until  all  the 
doctors  give  it  room  like  Dr.  Cabot,  or 
else  heed  the  words  of  Dr.  Mitchell,  that  it 
is  the  doctor's  duty  to  seek  in  some  cases 
"the  aid  of  the  clergyman,"  there  is  sure 
to  be  for  the  few  ministers  who  have  the 
proper  preparation,  temperament,  and 
character  a  widening  field  of  usefulness 
both  in  helping  neurasthenics  under  a 
doctor's  directions  to  get  well  and  in 
teaching  them  to  keep  well  by  the  appli- 
cation of  sound  principles  of  the  inner  life 
on  which  good  health  for  body,  mind,  and 
soul  alike  depend. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  QUEER  ONE  IN  THE  HOUSE 

IF  neurasthenia  is  a  word  of  recent 
origin,  psychasthenia  is  of  yet  more 
recent  coinage.  Dictionaries  ten  years 
old  do  not  contain  the  word,  and  young 
doctors  still  struggling  to  build  up  a 
practice  never  heard  it  once  while  they 
were  studying  for  their  degree. 

Scientific  definition  of  the  word  would 
be  beside  the  mark  in  such  a  book  as 
this.  It  is  enough  here  to  note  that 
while  psychasthenia,  like  neurasthenia, 
can  be  roughly  called  a  form  of  nervous 
weakness,  its  symptoms  are  conspicuously 
mental.  Janet  has  made  it  clear  that 
"psychasthenia  is  really  the  mental  state 
accompanying  obsessions  and  fixed, ideas," 
and  Dr.  Coriat  has  described  psychas- 
thenia with  some  picturesqueness  in  the 
83 


84     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

sentence:  "It  is  a  disease  of  the  mental 
level,  and  when  the  mental  level  sinks 
below  a  certain  point  we  have  the 
phenomena  of  psychasthenia."  1S 

The  symptoms  are  in  general  more 
distressing  than  the  symptoms  of  neuras- 
thenia. They  include  many  forms  of 
mental  agitation  and  mental  abnormal- 
ity. Weakness  of  the  will,  a  sense  of 
unreality,  exaggerated  conscientiousness, 
specific  or  pervasive  fear,  crises  of  acute 
anxiety,  mental  torture  without  cause 
assignable,  and  fixed  ideas  sometimes 
so  persistent  and  absurd  as  to  place  the 
sufferer  upon  that  watershed  between 
saneness  and  insanity  where  dwell 
habitually  the  irresponsible  and  half- 
insane. 

Almost  every  type  of  psychasthenia 
has  come  knocking  at  my  clinic  door 
these  twelve  months  past.  So  many 
of  them  have  been  people  in  positions  of 
importance  in  one  part  of  the  country 
or  another  that  I  have  sometimes  won- 
dered whether  it  be  not  true  that  "all 
the  world  's  a  little  queer.*' 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House  85 

Among  the  representative  cases  were 
two  women  subject  to  attacks  of  un- 
controllable weeping  not  strictly  hysteri- 
cal in  character,  the  doctors  thought. 
One  man  with  a  weak  will  wanted  help 
in  coming  to  a  decision  as  to  which  of 
several  women  who  loved  him  he  wished 
to  marry.  A  woman  wanted  help  in 
getting  rid  of  the  idea  of  years'  standing 
that  the  husband  of  another  woman  loved 
her  though  it  was  evident  to  every  one 
that  the  man  had  never  given  her  the 
slightest  reason  for  her  strange  obsession. 
A  woman  who  had  barely  escaped  from  a 
burning  house  only  to  have  the  place  to 
which  she  fled  struck  by  lightning  has 
been  haunted  since  by  a  strange  sense 
of  unreality  which  has  made  her,  like 
Nicholas  Tchaykovsky  in  the  Trubetzkoi 
Bastion,  confuse  her  own  phantoms  and 
abstractions  with  real  things  and  has 
caused  her  to  lose  confidence  in  her 
ordinary  mental  processes. 

One  woman,  over-conscientious,  would 
trust  no  member  of  her  family  but 
herself  to  fasten  up  the  house  at  night; 


86      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

while  another,  so  morbidly  conscientious 
that  she  brooded  all  the  time  over 
imaginary  sins,  replied  to  my  earnest 
exhortation  to  let  God  run  His  universe 
without  her  help,  "I  can't."  One  man 
had  suffered  for  so  many  years  from 
an  ungrounded  fear  that  he  could  not 
take  even  a  trolley  ride  alone,  and 
another  had  the  fixed  idea  that  he  must 
turn  the  door  knob  many  times  before 
he  crossed  a  threshold.  A  fine  woman, 
primarily  neurasthenic,  was  haunted  for 
months  by  the  visual  image  of  the  devil 
in  one  of  John  Kendrick  Bangs's  stories 
which  she  had  not  read  in  many  years. 
Obsessions  of  almost  every  sort  have  been 
brought  to  me,  and  though  sometimes 
both  alienists  and  neurologists  have  re- 
ported that  the  case  was  one  of  psychas- 
thenia  and  not  actual  insanity,  it  has 
seldom  been  possible  for  me,  busy  as  I 
am,  to  give  the  time  required  for  effective 
treatment. 

All  told,  of  the  four  hundred  people 
who  have  consulted  me,  twenty-five  have 
received  systematic  treatment  for  some 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    87 

form  of  psychasthenia.  Three  of  these 
are  now  to  all  appearances  well  again, 
seven  are  much  improved,  four  are 
slightly  improved,  and  four  are  not 
improved  at  all.  In  four  other  cases 
the  result  is  unknown,  two  that  were 
once  a  little  better  are  now  worse 
again,  one  case  had  to  be  abandoned 
in  the  middle  of  the  treatment,  and 
four  are  still  receiving  treatment. 

Of  the  seven  cases  much  improved, 
two  deserve  more  than  a  mere  word : 

The  first  has  been  in  some  detail 
described  on  page  49.  I  recall  it  now 
to  emphasise  its  unique  character  and 
the  unusual  results.  Every  neurologist 
knows  a  well  established  monophobia  is 
difficult  to  banish  from  the  patient's 
mind.  This  man  was  stricken  without 
warning  in  the  summer  of  1904  with  a 
fear  to  go  anywhere  without  his  wife. 
For  four  years  he  took  her  with  him 
even  on  his  business  rounds.  As  one 
specialist  after  another  failed  to  give  him 
substantial  relief,  he  grew  more  and 
more   discouraged.      He   was   peculiarly 


88     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

fortunate  in  the  general  practitioner  who 
had  charge  of  his  case  from  January, 
1908,  to  June,  and  yet  his  fear  persisted. 
When  he  came  to  me,  June  16th,  he 
was  utterly  dejected  and  wept  steadily 
through  the  first  two  interviews.  After 
that,  the  progress  back  to  health  was 
never  seriously  interrupted.  By  Septem- 
ber he  was  working  as  hard  as  in  his 
days  of  perfect  health,  and  seldom  took 
his  wife  with  him  on  any  of  his  trips. 
On  November  29th,  he  wrote: "  Something 
is  making  me  well  very  fast  now;  for  I 
surely  am  on  the  gain.  I  can  see  it 
myself."  I  have  not  seen  him  now  in 
many  weeks  but  his  New  Year's  greeting 
was  the  word  of  a  well  man. 

The  second  case  is  one  of  even  longer 
standing.  It  is  that  of  a  woman  thirty 
years  of  age.  At  first  the  case  as  diag- 
nosed appeared  to  be  simple  neuras- 
thenia. After  two  interviews  I  discovered 
that  the  mental  symptoms  were  more 
manifest  than  the  physical  ailments  and 
dated  farther  back.  The  fixed  idea  that 
no  one  really  cared  for  her  had  made 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    89 

her  miserable  in  mind  and  then  in  body. 
The  disappearance,  after  a  few  weeks,  of 
the  psychasthenia  was  followed  by  the 
abatement  of  the  neurasthenia  and  now 
she  lives  a  normal  mental  life,  and  though 
still  far  from  strong  she  has  the  peace  of 
mind  which  is  the  pledge,  as  her  good 
doctor  has  assured  me,  that  she  will 
have  better  health  of  body  too  in  the 
future. 

The  treatment  of  the  psychasthenic 
follows  the  same  lines  as  the  treatment 
of  the  neurasthenic  with  a  redistribution 
of  the  emphasis  in  certain  instances. 
There  is  undoubtedly  a  place  for  hyp- 
notism in  this  class  of  cases.  Personalities 
divided  and  dissociated  can  be  pieced 
together  as  Dr.  Morton  Prince  has  proved 
in  the  extraordinary  instance  of  Miss 
Beauchamp.  Obsessions  long  established 
can  be  dislodged  through  deep  hypnosis. 
This  is  not  now  an  open  question  as  one 
may  easily  convince  himself  who  will 
read  with  a  truly  scientific  spirit  such 
books  as  B  ram  well's,  Lloyd  Tuckey's, 
Forel's,  and  Binet's;    or  who  will,  like 


90     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  Rev.  Chauncey  J.  Hawkins,  pay  a 
visit  to  the  mental  clinics  in  London, 
Paris,  Berne,  Zurich,  Stockholm,  and  St. 
Petersburg.  The  exact  value  of  hyp- 
nosis, though  still  somewhat  indeter- 
minate, in  psychasthenia  is  a  fact  as 
undeniable  as  aeronautics  or  wireless 
telegraphy. 

Its  systematic  and  intelligent  appli- 
cation to  specific  cases  of  psychasthenia 
requires  more  time  and  more  favourable 
conditions  than  I  have  been  able  to 
secure  in  my  Tuesday  clinic,  and  there- 
fore I  have  been  content  to  make  use 
of  the  simpler  quieting  treatment  with 
which  such  results  as  I  am  able  to 
report  have  been  secured.  In  the  case 
of  two  men  I  have,  in  special  appoint- 
ments, endeavoured  to  make  use  of 
hypnotism  but  without  appreciable  suc- 
cess. Neither  seemed  to  be  a  fit  subject 
for  hypnosis.  Neither  went  below  the 
stage  of  ordinary  quiet.  That  the  fault 
was  not  entirely  mine  I  demonstrated  by 
calling  in  a  trained  psychologist,  who  has 
had  many  years  of  practical  experience  in 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    91 

hypnotising  people  for  scientific  purposes, 
but  who  was  unable  to  induce  hypnosis 
in  either  instance.  I  was  sorry  in  one 
instance  because  the  patient's  family 
doctor  earnestly  advised  hypnosis,  and 
in  the  other  because  the  patient  is 
himself  a  trained  psychologist,  head  of 
a  large  department  in  a  well-known 
college  at  some  distance  from  North- 
hampton, and  confident  that  he  could 
be  delivered  from  his  troublesome  obses- 
sions by  profound  hypnosis. 

My  method  of  procedure  is  simplicity 
itself.  I  use  no  scientific  terminology  in 
dealing  with  the  ordinary  case.  My 
psychasthenics  are  in  all  of  my  relation- 
ship with  them  merely  "  queer."  Almost 
every  home  has  its  queer  one.  The 
mere  mention  of  the  fact  brings  a  cloud 
to  many  a  brow  and  puts  an  ache  into 
many  a  heart.  When  the  queer  one 
comes  to  me  I  try  to  find  out  first  of 
all  whether  she — for  like  the  neurasthenic 
she  is  oftener  a  woman  than  a  man — 
is  a  genuine  psychasthenic  or  a  pseudo 
one. 


92     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Some  queer  ones  affect  queerness. 
They  get  from  it  an  inner  satisfaction 
which  they  get  from  nothing  else.  Queer- 
ness, they  imagine,  lends  them  a  dis- 
tinction normal  people  never  have.  They 
do  not  see  their  queerness  as  it  really 
is, — abnormal  egotism,  intolerable  con- 
ceit, vulgar  vanity.  When  I  am  con- 
vinced the  queer  one  affects  queerness, 
I  make  short  shrift  of  her.  I  bring  her 
up  before  "the  God  of  things  as  they 
are."  I  make  the  real  fact,  always 
evident  to  every  one  but  her,  entirely 
clear  to  her.  I  see  that  she  soars  close 
enough  to  the  warm  sun  of  truth  to 
melt  her  wings  of  wax.  I  tell  her  frankly 
that  she  is  a  social  parasite  absorbing  the 
vitality  of  those  around  her  and  giving 
nothing  in  return.  Sometimes  the  truth 
told  thus,  but  told  without  a  sign  of 
bitterness,  suffices  to  redeem  her  from 
her  queerness.  Sometimes  like  the  rich 
young  man  she  goes  away  sorrowful. 
Once  or  twice  she  has  gone  off  in  anger 
to  pay  me  the  compliment  of  ceasing  to 
believe  in  the  Emmanuel  movement. 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    93 

But  the  genuine  psychasthenic  has  no 
such  experience.  After  I  have  won  her 
confidence  I  begin  to  make  her  see 
herself  as  others  see  her,  even  though 
they  may  not  understand  her.  I  try 
to  help  her  to  realise  all  the  unhappy 
implications  of  her  egoism.  I  am  some- 
times able  to  convince  her  that  what 
those  nearest  her  are  constantly  suggest- 
ing, that  she  is  unnecessarily  sensitive, 
is  true.  I  have  more  than  once  helped 
her  to  resolve  to  follow  the  example  of 
the  good  woman  who  remarked:  "I  am 
strictly  honest.  I  never  pick  up  things 
which  do  not  belong  to  me;  not  even 
slights."  I  make  the  strengthening  of 
the  will  by  auto-suggestion  and  by 
constant  exercise  the  strategic  point  in 
her  co-operation  with  me,  and  I  assure 
her  that  the  will  to  be  well  is  the  un- 
failing harbinger  of  the  emancipation 
from  all  queerness. 

Sometimes  in  the  early  stages  of  the 
treatment  she  reacts  from  it.  The  more 
I  reach  out  for  her  with  anything  but 
comfort   or   approval,   the   farther   she 


94      The  Emmanuel  Movement 

withdraws  into  her  inner  shrine  of  mor- 
bidness or  self-depreciation.  I  argue 
with  her,  and  she  weeps.  I  reprove  her, 
and  Gibraltar  is  a  thing  of  wax  beside 
her  stubbornness.  I  act  for  her  good, 
in  two  instances,  without  her  knowledge 
or  against  her  weakened  will,  and  I 
barely  escape  the  loss  of  her  regard  and 
confidence.  But  risks  must  be  taken 
where  large  issues  are  involved,  and  the 
soundness  of  the  mind  or  salvation  of 
the  character  is  the  stake  for  which  one 
plays  who  tries  to  help  the  queer  one  in 
the  house,  and  after  a  whole  year's 
experience  I  take  no  case  of  psychas- 
thenia  without  exacting  for  myself  in 
advance  the  utmost  freedom  of  volition 
and  of  action  in  the  patient's  interest. 

The  queer  one  is  invariably  certain 
that  no  case  can  be  so  pathetic  and  so 
pitiable  as  hers.  And  there  is  in  con- 
sequence great  need  at  times  of  sympathy 
and  reassurance  given  with  intelligent 
discrimination.  Not  merely  do  I  cite 
impersonally  cases  as  bad  or  worse  than 
hers  that  have  come  to  me;   I  now  and 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    95 

then  turn  literature's  illuminating  page 
to  her  great  comfort.  I  give  her  the 
proof  positive  that  queerness  is  often 
the  distinctive  mark  of  genius.  I  like 
to  quote  Saleeby  that  it  is  the  queer 
people  who  do  "the  pioneer  work  of  the 
world."  I  remind  her  that  Hamlet 
knew  "a  hawk  from  a  handsaw"  even 
though  he  was  mad  "north-north-west," 
and  that  Ibsen's  obsessed,  melancholic, 
and  hysterical  creations  are,  as  a  Smith 
College  professor  has  made  clear,  symbols 
of  a  wealth  of  thought  and  feeling  that 
give  the  author  some  claim  to  the  title  of 
the  Norwegian  Shakespeare. 

More  than  one  queer  one  in  my  clinic 
has  taken  heart  again  in  her  discourage- 
ment as  she  has  been  reminded  that 
Socrates  spoke  with  no  less  authority 
because  in  every  casual  sneeze  he  heard 
the  voice  of  God;  that  Pascal,  haunted 
all  those  years  by  the  visual  image  of  a 
precipice  which  seemed  ever  to  be  opening 
up  beside  him,  left  for  the  lasting  conso- 
lation of  the  spiritually  minded  his 
Pensies;    that   though   Auguste    Comte 


96     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

was  undoubtedly  a  semi-lunatic  yet  John 
Stuart  Mill  and  Frederick  Harrison  were 
proud  to  sit  at  his  feet;  that  Cromwell 
had  a  psychasthenic  vision  of  a  woman 
of  gigantic  stature  standing  by  his  bed- 
side and  informing  him  that  he  would 
be  one  day  the  greatest  man  in  England ; 
and  that  Lincoln  had  strange  visions  and 
went  to  his  assassination  with  a  sense  of 
some  impending  doom. 

Sometimes  I  admit  for  the  discussion's 
sake  that  queerness  may  be  no  more 
than  eccentricity  unrelieved  by  genius, 
and  that  even  if,  like  Schiller,  the  queer 
one  cannot  meditate  except  she  keep 
decaying  apples  in  her  bureau  drawer,  it 
does  not  follow  of  necessity  that  her 
queerness  will  be  relieved  of  its  absurdity 
by  the  production  of  a  Wallenstein; 
that  even  if,  like  Fechner,  she  suffers 
from  insomnia,  that  gives  her  no  clear 
title  to  a  place  beside  St.  Francis  and 
Tauler;  that  even  if  like  Beethoven 
she  has  a  morbid  preference  to  wash 
her  face  in  ice  water,  that  does  not 
prove  that   her  name   will   go   stealing 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    97 

down  the  ages  to  the  mellifluous  measures 
of  a  Seventh  Symphony.  But  I  at  the 
same  time  remind  her  that  there  is  a 
law  of  compensation  even  in  her  case, 
and  that  she  may  take  comfort  if  she 
will  in  Emerson's  Fable  of  the  Mountain 
and  the  Squirrel.  With  scarcely  an 
exception  I  have  won  the  psychasthenic 
to  this  wholesome  point  of  view. 

But  this  is  merely  the  beginning  of  the 
treatment.  The  little  sermon  preached 
in  her  listening  ear  at  frequent  inter- 
vals while  her  muscles  are  relaxed  and 
her  eyes  closed  serves  a  purpose  to  no 
one  more  evident  than  to  the  patient 
herself.  16  The  constant  understanding 
and  the  unfailing  uplift  and  encourage- 
ment all  have  some  significance.  Every- 
thing that  can  be  said  to  her  or  done 
for  her  in  the  clinic  is  of  significance. 
But  even  then  the  good  work  is  at  most 
half  done. 

There  must  be  help  for  her  outside 
the  clinic  too.  Her  situation  in  the 
little  world  in  which  she  lives  is  sad 
beyond  description.    There  is  often  no- 


98       The  Emmanuel  Movement 

thing  in  her  character  to  lend  dignity  to 
her  queerness,  nothing  in  her  home 
to  repay  her  for  it.  And  as  for  the 
larger  world  outside  the  home,  it  usually 
declines  to  have  concern  at  all  about  the 
case.  Society  in  general  shuns  her, 
lies  to  her,  gets  on  with  her  at  the  ex- 
pense of  everything  save  selfish  ease, 
puts  the  brand  of  queerness  on  her,  and 
sometimes  shuts  her  up  in  an  asylum 
when  a  clearer  understanding  of  her 
case  would  make  it  possible  to  get  on 
with  her  at  home. 

To  those  who  by  reason  of  kinship  or 
friendship  acknowledge  their  share,  and 
it  is  often  great,  of  the  responsibility, 
I  usually  make  the  following  suggestions : 

i.  Help  me  to  find  some  occupation 
for  your  queer  one  which  will  be  con- 
genial and  yet  not  overtax  her.  The 
arts  and  crafts  have  been  a  boon  to 
many.  The  study  of  ceramics,  the 
making  of  picture  puzzles  for  the  great 
department  stores,  the  systematic  reading 
when  the  eyes  will  stand  the  strain  of 
some    prolific    author    like    Dickens    or 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House     99 

Balzac,  the  employment  in  an  office 
where  the  business  hours  are  brief  or 
in  a  library  where  there  is  not  too  close 
contact  with  persons,  all  have  ministered 
in  one  way  or  another  to  the  mental 
wholesomeness  of  queer  ones.  In  several 
instances  light  employment  in  the  home, 
gradually  increased  and  diversified,  has 
proved  the  one  thing  needful.  Help  me 
to  open  up  the  avenues  of  human  service 
which  will  lead  her  to  wholesomeness 
at  last. 

2.  Avoid  all  subjectivity  in  dealing 
with  the  queer  one  in  your  house.  Be 
not  blinded  by  affection  to  the  duty 
which  you  owe  to  the  normal  as  well 
as  the  abnormal.  Others  in  the  home 
have  rights  as  well  as  the  queer  one. 
If  it  is  cruel  to  be  inconsiderate  or 
unsympathetic  with  your  queer  one,  it 
is  no  less  cruel,  criminally  cruel,  to 
sacrifice  the  interests  of  your  children 
for  her  sake.  Gentle  insistence  on  the 
children's  rights  will  often  bring  the 
queer  one  to  her  senses  where  the  slightest 
intimation  of  the  rights  of  adults  will 


ioo     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

but  set  her  the  more  firmly  in  her  queer- 
ness.  She  must  be  very  queer  indeed 
who  will  not  be  convinced  that  to  turn 
the  dining-room  or  nursery  into  a  sym- 
posium for  the  exploitation  of  personal 
grievances  or  for  the  discussion  of  un- 
toward happenings  is  to  invite  the  search- 
ing challenge  of  the  God  of  things  as  they 
ought  to  be: 

"Who  has  drugged  my  boy's  cup? 

Who  has  mixed  my  boy's  bread? 
Who,  with  sadness  and  madness 

Has  turned  the  man-child's  head?" 

3.  Skilfully  direct,  without  the  queer 
one's  knowledge  and  without  nagging  at 
her,  the  irresistible  stream  of  public 
opinion  upon  her  queerness.  Enlist  the 
interest,  if  possible,  of  the  entire  family. 
There  is  a  way  to  do  this  without 
disloyalty  to  her. 

Get  your  family  doctor's  help.  No 
one  in  ordinary  circumstances  is  likely  to 
be  so  influential  as  he  in  inducing  her  to 
keep  physically  well  by  getting  all  the 
sleep  she  needs,  by  eating  whether  she 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    101 

has  appetite  or  not,  by  deep  breathing 
of  fresh  air,  by  taking  outdoor  exercise, 
and,  when  necessary,  medicine  for  the 
correction  of  certain  local  disturbances 
likely  to  occur  from  time  to  time  with 
psychasthenics. 

Admit  into  your  confidence  some  pa- 
tient, buoyant,  cheerful  friend  outside 
the  home,  who  will  understand  without 
a  special  word  of  explanation  on  your 
part,  help  you  over  the  hard  places 
now  and  then,  and  relieve  you  of  the 
strain  of  constant  comradeship  with 
queerness. 

Sometimes  the  family,  the  doctor,  and 
the  trusty  friend  will  combine  with  you 
in  making  the  appeal  so  often  powerful 
with  children, — that  queerness  and  the 
worry  which  it  brings,  will  mar  whatever 
personal  attractiveness  the  queer  one 
may  possess.  When  the  queer  one  finds, 
as  Darwin  pointed  out,  that  queerness 
writes  itself  upon  the  face  in  ugly  lines 
and  poor  complexions  and  scatters  silver 
threads  too  soon  among  the  gold,  she 
will  be  more  likely  to  take  notice  and  on 


102    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  sly  to  give  you  some  assistance  in 
the  elimination  of  her  queerness. 

4.  Be  very  patient,  but  be  also  very 
sparing  with  your  sympathy.  Some- 
times for  her  good,  even  though  she 
thinks  you  hard  and  cold,  withhold  it 
altogether.  Even  superficial  hardness 
has  its  place  at  times.  Save  her  from 
self-pity.  The  results  of  that  are  worse 
than  those  of  queerness.  Illustrate  in 
your  own  character  the  gladness,  serenity, 
and  wholesomeness  which  you  would  see 
in  her. 

5.  Do  the  best  you  can  for  your  queer 
one,  but  never  grieve  at  the  results. 
Not  all  the  queer  ones  can  be  cured  of 
queerness.  I  have  three  times  failed 
when  I  expected  most.  There  is  much 
truth  in  Dr.  Upson's  word  that  "the 
psychoses  are  a  stone  wall  against  which 
the  waves  of  psychotherapy  beat  in 
vain."  There  are  in  many  cases  mental 
inheritances,  moral  tendencies,  dental 
lesions,  eye-strain,  or  orthopaedic  ir- 
regularities which  escape  the  sharpest 
diagnosis.     The  most  that  can  be  done 


The  Queer  One  in  the  House    103 

in  certain  instances  is  to  wear  off  their 
sharpest  corners,  subdue  them  to  the 
larger  adaptations  of  the  home,  inveigle 
them  into  the  rendering  of  service  which 
keeps  them  out  of  mischief,  gives  them 
a  new  appreciation  of  their  value  to  the 
home,  and  makes  them  easier  to  live 
with.  Even  that,  little  as  it  seems  to 
be,  is  worth  the  utmost  price  you  pay 
for  it. 

The  friends  of  Pascal  used  to  wonder 
why,  saint  as  he  was,  he  continued  till 
the  end  morbid,  languid,  and  valetudi- 
narian. Their  wonder  ceased,  however, 
when  at  the  autopsy  it  was  found  that 
"within  the  skull,  beside  the  ventricles 
of  the  brain,  there  were  two  impressions 
like  the  mark  of  a  finger  in  wax,"  which 
are  never  found  in  any  normal  brain. 

Do  your  best  for  your  queer  one,  and 
leave  the  rest  to  God.  For  "it  is  he  that 
hath  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves." 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  CURE  OF  THE  ALCOHOLIC 

ALCOHOL  is  on  the  rack  of  criticism. 
The  days  of  the  saloon,  at  least, 
are  numbered.  The  handwriting  is  on 
the  wall,  and  to  no  one  is  it  more  evident 
than  to  the  well-informed  rum-seller. 
Arguments  and  facts  are  now  smothering 
all  opposition.  The  American  people  are 
at  last  concluding  that,  all  things  con- 
sidered, the  saloon  is  not  worth  while. 

The  popular  indictment  against  the 
saloon  includes  such  points  as  these: 
It  lures  young  men  to  form  the  drink 
habit  who  else  would  never  drink  at  all. 
It  prevents  the  middle-aged  and  aged 
from  breaking  off  the  habit  who  could 
effectually  resist  temptation  but  for  the 
ubiquitous   saloon.      It   poisons   politics 

and  prevents  the  proper  government  of 
104 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     105 

cities  both  by  furnishing  the  petty  poli- 
ticians a  convenient  meeting  point  and 
by  placing  many  of  them  under  such 
personal  obligation  to  the  license-holder 
that  violations  of  the  law  are  overlooked 
and  the  right  to  sell  liquor  granted 
where  for  the  best  interests  of  the  com- 
munity it  ought  invariably  to  be  refused. 
Even  moderate  drinking  is  losing  its 
respectability.  It  seems  a  far  cry  back 
to  Goldsmith  singing  in  She  Stoops  to 
Conquer, 

"  Good  liquor,  I  stoutly  maintain, 
Gives  genus  a  better  discerning," 

and  to  our  pioneers  on  the  frontier 
stimulating  with  whiskey  the  appetite 
grown  weary  before  the  system  had 
received  its  complement  of  nourishment 
from  corn  bread  and  pork.  But  it  seems 
almost  as  far  a  cry  to  Stevenson  in  his 
Travels  with  a  Donkey  remarking:  "I 
had  emptied  out  my  brandy  at  Florae, 
for  I  could  bear  the  stuff  no  longer,  and 
replaced  it  with  some  generous  and 
scented  Volnay;    and  now  I   drank  to 


106    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  moon's  sacred  majesty  upon  the 
road." 

The  investigations  of  Metchnikoff, 
Kraepelin,  Furer,  Rudin,  Kurz,  Aschaff en- 
burg,  Siemerling,  and  others  seem  to 
justify  the  claims  of  Saleeby17  and 
W.  H.  Smith,  writing  in  McClure's 
Magazine,18  that  alcohol  taken  habitu- 
ally even  in  small  quantities  threatens 
the  physical  structure  of  the  stomach, 
the  liver,  the  kidneys,  the  heart,  the 
blood-vessels,  the  nerves,  and  the  brain; 
decreases  the  capacity  for  work  of  every 
sort,  dulls  the  edge  of  mind  and  morals, 
lowers  the  level  of  health  and  shortens 
the  length  of  life,  and  instead  of  being 
social  in  its  effect  tends  in  the  long  run 
to  promote  the  anti-social  propensities  of 
the  race. 

As  though  the  tale  of  alcohol's  iniqui- 
ties were  not  full,  science  seems  to  be 
approaching  the  conclusion  that  the 
claim  of  a  few  years  ago  that  alcohol 
sometimes  serves  the  purpose  of  a  food 
can  no  longer  be  maintained.  It  is  now 
evident  that  alcohol   fails  to  meet  the 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     107 

one  essential  test  which  food-chemistry 
grown  expert  now  applies, — of  making 
new  tissue.  A  ridiculously  small  quantity 
of  alcohol  under  ideal  conditions  may  be 
oxidised;  but  as  these  conditions  are 
never  complied  with,  says  Saleeby,  al- 
cohol is  for  all  practical  purposes  no 
more  of  a  food  than  opium,  which  has 
had  no  one  to  sing  its  praises  since  the 
days  of  Coleridge.  Far  from  being  a 
stimulant,  alcohol  is  usually  a  sedative 
when  it  is  not  a  depressant,  and  not  only 
predisposes  those  who  use  it  much  to 
pneumonia  and  tuberculosis,  but  also  is 
no  longer  indicated  in  fevers  where  ten 
years  ago  it  was  frequently  prescribed. 

These  and  kindred  facts  I  often  bring 
to  the  attention  of  those  who  come  to 
me  for  help  in  the  drink  habit.  But 
more  than  knowledge  is,  alas,  required 
in  dealing  with  the  alcoholic  subject. 
In  spite  of  Socrates's  judgment,  men 
will  not  do  right  because  they  know 
the  right.  Where  there  is  an  inherited 
tendency  to  drink  or  the  habit  is  es- 
tablished,   one   glass   can    render   those 


io8    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

who  drink  immune  to  argument.  One 
glass  is  enough  to  fire  the  blood  of  the 
habitual  drinker,  as  one  taste  of  blood 
suffices  to  turn  the  tiger  from  a  cub  into 
a  full-grown  beast  in  appetite. 

Treatment  of  the  alcoholic  to  be 
effective  must  discriminate  between  the 
ordinary  drinker  and  the  dipsomaniac. 
The  steady  drinker  usually  takes  his 
glass  because  he  likes  both  its  taste  and 
its  effect.  The  dipsomaniac  often  has 
no  liking  for  the  taste  but  only  for  the 
effects  immediately  pleasing.  The  steady 
drinker  frequently  has  no  desire  to  stop. 
The  dipsomaniac  often  wants  most  of 
all,  between  his  sprees,  to  stop. 

With  the  ordinary  drinker  the  problem 
is  to  create  a  heavenly  discontent  with 
drink  and  all  that  it  entails.  With  the 
dipsomaniac  the  problem  is  to  get  him 
through  the  period,  often  brief,  of  tempta- 
tion which  recurs  at  frequent  or  in- 
frequent intervals.  In  one  instance  of  a 
dipsomaniac  who  had  gone  for  months 
without  touching  a  drop  I  was  able  to 
accomplish  the  difficult  feat  of  inducing 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     109 

him  to  submit  to  a  treatment  on  the 
first  day  of  his  relapse  and  after  he  had 
had  but  a  glass  or  two.  He  went  there- 
after for  a  week  without  another  glass, 
and  could,  I  am  sure,  have  been  saved 
altogether  from  his  spree  but  for  the 
circumstance  that  being  preoccupied  with 
the  details  of  an  extremely  busy  season 
in  a  parish  in  which  I  have  no  assistant, 
I  was  unable  in  spite  of  all  my  planning 
to  give  him  a  treatment  every  day,  and 
so  he  fell  a  second  time  at  the  week's 
end  and  could  not  regain  his  self-control 
for  four  long  days. 

In  the  case  of  both  the  steady  drinker 
and  the  dipsomaniac,  the  definite  treat- 
ment is  usually  but  a  small  portion  of 
the  treatment  necessary  to  effect  a  cure. 
With  the  saloon  around  the  corner,  a 
continuous  allurement  and  incitement  to 
his  appetite,  to  definite  treatment  must 
be  added  the  co-operation  of  the  family, 
the  friends,  the  church.  The  minister 
with  sermons  to  prepare  and  a  parish  to 
run  can  not  give  the  enormous  time 
which  almost  every  case  requires  for  com- 


no    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

plete  cure;  and  unfortunately  it  is  seldom 
possible  for  him  to  find  a  layman  able  or 
willing  to  make  the  large  sacrifice  needed 
of  seeing  the  unhappy  patient  for  at  least 
a  little  while  each  day,  of  cultivating  a 
close  friendship  with  him  no  matter 
what  the  patient's  faults  or  lapses  may 
be,  of  standing  by  him  when  all  others 
fail,  and  of  believing  in  him  even  when 
he  loses  temporarily  his  self-respect. 
Nor  have  all  efforts  and  expenditures  of 
money  yet  sufficed  to  find  a  rival  to  the 
saloon  with  attractions  ample  to  become 
what  the  saloon  now  is  on  every  side,  the 
poor  man's  club. 

The  Emmanuel  worker's  efforts  must, 
therefore,  be  invariably  supplemented  in 
the  treatment  of  both  types  of  cases; 
but  the  need  is  perhaps  greater  in  the 
treatment  of  the  dipsomaniac.  For  no 
matter  how  long  his  abstinence  from 
drink,  the  day  at  last  arrives  when  the 
desire  for  drink  again  becomes  insatiate. 
The  story  is  in  almost  every  case  the 
same.  The  dipsomaniac  fights  manfully 
against   the   first   consciousness   of  the 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     i xi 

returning  appetite.  He  tries  to  stem  the 
tide  he  feels  sweeping  him  away.  If  at 
this  stage  he  can  be  shut  up,  for  which 
there  is  no  provision  in  our  legal  system, 
or  can  be  induced  to  turn  to  his  Em- 
manuel friend,  which  for  some  strange 
reason  usually  appears  impossible,  he 
can  undoubtedly  be  helped.  But  the  one 
decision  which  he  ordinarily  makes  is 
to  take  one  glass,  and  then  go  home. 

A  bartender  with  a  kindly  disposition 
hesitated  ere  he  gave  a  certain  dipso- 
maniac, who  had  for  months  abstained, 
a  drink,  and  beseechingly  inquired :  "Are 
you  going  on  a  spree  again?"  Then  un- 
wisely he  accepted  the  unhappy  victim's 
assurance  that  one  glass  was  all  he 
wanted,  and  the  deed  was  done.  For 
days  the  dipsomaniac  had  what  he 
called  "a  beautiful  time."  Life  was  for 
him  aglow  with  interest  and  happiness. 
He  was  the  good  fellow  with  every  one 
who  came  his  way.  He  took  no  thought 
for  the  morrow  of  agony,  remorse,  and 
self-reproach.  But  the  morrow  came. 
The    desire    to    drink    disappeared    as 


ii2    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

strangely  and  as  rapidly  as  it  had  come, 
and  there  was  the  reckoning  a  few  days 
later  with  a  conscience  still  cultivated 
and  refined,  in  spite  of  the  unhappy 
experience. 

Says  Reverend  Chauncey  J.  Hawkins 
in  one  of  the  best  treatments  of  the  Cure 
of  the  Drunkard  ever  written :  ■ 9 

We  may  call  the  conduct  of  an  ordinary 
drunkard  a  sin,  but  the  action  of  this  dipso- 
maniac is  the  result  of  a  disease, — a  disease 
of  the  will  which  renders  him  incapable  of 
overcoming  the  desire  to  drink.  We  call  him 
a  victim  of  habit.  This  means  that  his  constant 
indulgence  in  a  habit  leads  inevitably  to  its 
accomplishment  when  the  first  of  a  train  of 
events  ordinarily  preceding  it  occurs.  A 
feeling  of  mental  inertia,  of  sinking  in  the 
stomach,  or  of  dryness  of  the  mouth  has  so 
often  led  him  to  drink  that  we  can  predict  his 
line  of  conduct  when  opportunity  for  indulgence 
is  offered,  as  truly  as  we  can  predict  the  physical 
and  mental  conditions  that  are  to  follow  as 
the  result  of  the  germs  of  typhoid.  His  freedom 
of  will  has  been  destroyed,  and  his  conduct, 
which  follows  certain  stimuli,  is  the  inevitable 
result  of  certain  causes. 

What  is  to  be  done  to  help  the  drunkard 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic       113 

whatever  be  his  type?  The  Keeley  cure 
is  frequently  a  disappointment.  While 
men  like  Jerry  McCauley  and  the  Sal- 
vation Army  leaders  have  done  some- 
thing, the  emotional  motive  which  they 
use  does  not  avail  in  every  case.  The 
conventional  minister  and  the  ordinary 
doctor  in  this  country  are  doing  prac- 
tically nothing,  and  tacitly  confess  to 
helplessness  before  the  problem. 

In  Europe,  however,  the  situation  is 
far  different.  Serious  attacks  have  there 
been  made  by  scientific  medicine  upon 
the  problem.  The  principle  of  suggestion 
has  been  used  with  some  success,  and 
there  is  scarcely  a  large  centre  in  Europe 
where  to-day  physicians  of  high  standing 
are  not  making  some  headway  in  the 
suggestive  treatment  of  the  drunkard.20 

Charcot,  there  is  some  reason  to  believe, 
had  after  twenty  years'  experience  about 
four  hundred  cases  of  cures  of  alcoholism 
out  of  six  hundred  treated.  Forel,  as  long 
ago  as  1888,  at  the  Congress  of  Neur- 
ologists held  in  Zurich,  reported  much 
success   in  the  same  field,   and   in  the 


ii4    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

latest  edition  of  his  monumental  work 
on  Hypnotism  and  Psychotherapy  he  cites 
the  case  of  a  man  seventy  years  of 
age  who  was  completely  cured  of  an 
apparently  hopeless  case  of  alcoholism 
accompanied  by  bad  character  in  general. 
Tokarsky  of  Moscow,  in  1901  in  Paris, 
stated  that  of  the  seven  hundred  persons 
he  had  treated  eighty  per  cent,  were  cured 
and  Wiamsky  of  Saratow  in  1904  pre- 
sented about  the  same  percentage  of 
cures  out  of  319  cases  treated.  Orlitzky 
of  Moscow  has  a  record  of  fifty  per  cent, 
in  six  hundred  cases,  and  Tuckey  lays 
it  down  as  a  general  proposition  that 
about  the  same  results  may  usually  be 
expected.21 

Bramwell  of  London  had  treated  when 
his  book  appeared  seventy-six  cases  of 
which  twenty-eight  recovered,  thirty-six 
improved,  and  in  twelve  cases  no  results 
whatever  were  obtained.  The  average 
number  of  treatments  was  twenty,  and 
in  dipsomania  his  habit  has  been  to  begin 
treatment  at  the  commencement  of  a 
period  of  quiescence  and  to  endeavour  to 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     115 

prevent  the  next  attack  or  at  least  to 
weaken  or  retard  it.  2  2 

In  my  efforts  to  help  alcoholics  by 
suggestion  re-enforced  by  faith,  I  am 
conditioned  by  the  lack  of  time  and  the 
inability  in  a  life  as  busy  as  mine  is  to 
control  conditions.  But  I  have  had  this 
year  past  enough  experience  to  warrant 
me  in  wishing  that  I  could  command 
more  time  and  larger  opportunity.  About 
a  dozen  cases  of  alcoholism  have  in  one 
way  or  another  this  year  past  come  under 
my  consideration.  To  five  I  have  given 
treatment  as  systematic  as  was  in  the 
circumstances  possible.  Three  of  the 
five  were  dipsomaniacs  and  two  were 
steady  drinkers.  One  of  the  dipsomaniacs 
has  now  gone  for  three  months  without 
a  drop,  though  a  week — or  at  most  a 
fortnight — had  been  before  the  usual 
limit.  In  another  case  the  attacks  have 
been  cut  down  from  several  a  year  to 
two.  In  the  third  instance,  after  forty 
years  in  which  the  habit  was  to  go  every 
week  or  two  upon  a  spree,  the  victim 
never  drank  for  four  long  months,  and 


u6    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

could,  I  am  quite  sure,  be  altogether 
cured  if  I  could  see  him  twice  a  week 
for  a  whole  year.  One  steady  drinker 
who  was  going  from  bad  to  worse  has 
not  been  intoxicated  in  almost  a  year. 
Another  who  drank  every  day  and  has 
recently  begun  his  treatment  has  not 
touched  a  glass  in  weeks.  These  are 
offered  only  as  reports  of  progress.  But 
they  represent,  at  any  rate,  a  conscien- 
tious effort  to  deal  systematically  and 
scientifically  with  a  problem  before  which 
like  other  ministers  I  stood  inept,  though 
not  uninterested,  until  a  year  ago. 

My  method  is  the  same  in  all  essentials 
in  both  types  of  cases.  I  use  suggestion 
re-enforced  by  faith  and  mingle  them 
throughout  the  entire  course  of  treatment. 
There  is  frank  talking  at  the  outset  on 
both  sides.  I  take  no  one  for  treatment 
who  does  not  convince  me  that  he 
actually  wishes  to  stop  drink.  More 
than  this,  I  take  no  one  for  treatment 
except  I  am  convinced  that  he  yearns 
not  merely  for  escape  from  the  slavery 
of  alcohol  but  also  hungers  and  thirsts 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     117 

after  righteousness  in  general.  One  man 
I  declined  to  treat  at  all  because  he 
wanted  to  be  saved  from  drink  and  yet 
continue  his  old  life  in  other  respects. 
Another  man  I  found  on  the  first  visit 
that  I  could  not  keep  because  he  was 
more  intent  on  airing  his  grievances 
against  certain  members  of  his  family 
than  in  giving  up  the  habit  which  gave 
his  family  the  right  perhaps  to  entertain 
a  grievance  against  him. 

When  a  man  comes  to  me  for  treatment 
I  first  of  all  have  a  physician  pass  upon 
his  physical  condition  and  give  him 
treatment,  if  he  needs  it,  for  those  ills 
which  drink  at  last  engenders.  I  exact 
from  him  a  pledge,  which  I  sometimes 
in  the  presence  of  witnesses  require  him 
to  sign,  that  he  will  never  again  touch 
liquor  without  my  permission.  I  have 
with  every  alcoholic  and  his  wife  an 
agreement  that,  if  either  has  any  reason 
to  believe  the  temptation  to  drink  is 
setting  in,  I  am  at  once  to  be  informed 
by  telephone  at  any  time  of  day  or 
night.     I   require  of  every  patient   co- 


n8    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

operation  with  me  at  every  point  in  the 
upbuilding  of  the  spiritual  life.  He  is 
to  go  to  church  twice  a  Sunday, — to 
his  own  church  if  he  has  one.  He  is  to 
live  a  devotional  life  such  as  I  have 
prescribed  on  page  75  ff.  He  is  to 
substitute  church  interests  and,  when 
possible,  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation for  the  associations  which  have 
hitherto  been  dragging  him  down.  The 
one  thing — let  me  repeat — which  it  seems 
impossible  to  secure  is  the  effective  aid  of 
Christian  men  who  will  not  merely  see 
the  man  once  or  twice  and  then  forget 
him,  but  two  or  three  times  a  week  for 
a  year  or  two  and  be  a  true  friend  to  him. 
While  there  is  a  sense  in  which  al- 
coholism is  a  disease,  I  do  not  emphasise 
this  fact  in  the  treatment  of  the  alcoholic. 
I  try  to  build  up  in  him  the  sense  of  his 
responsibility  to  God  and  man.  I  tell 
him  frankly  that  drink  is  a  sin,  and  I 
describe  the  character  of  sin  in  general. 
I  tell  him  that  sin  is  not  merely  social 
but  also  individual.  I  direct  him  to  his 
dead  yesterdays  lying  stiff  and  stark  on 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     119 

the  shore  of  the  irreparable  past.  I  tell 
him  that  his  special  sin  both  robs  him 
of  the  power  to  do  the  duty  of  the  day 
and  to  go  out  into  the  future  with  a 
morning  heart  for  any  fate  and  a  ready 
hand  for  any  work.  I  press  his  sin 
home  to  him  with  such  earnestness  that 
sometimes  he  is  in  the  mood  to  cry: 

"  My  conscience  hath  a  thousand  tongues, 
And  every  tongue  brings  in  a  several  tale, 
And  every  tale  condemns  me  for  a  villain."  23 

When  his  sinfulness  is  so  clear  to  him 
that,  as  in  one  instance,  he  bids  me 
stop  and  says,  "I  can  not  stand  such 
words,  I  know  they  are  too  true,  I  know 
that  I  am  ruining  my  own  life  and  the 
lives  of  those  I  love,"  then  I  offer  words 
of  cheer  and  consolation.  I  tell,  as 
earnestly  as  I  have  told  him  of  his  sin, 
the  story  of  God's  love  for  man  and 
man's  inability  to  blot  out  the  love  of 
God.  I  never  knew  the  full  meaning  of 
the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  till  I 
read  it  to  a  drunkard  and  saw  his  face 
light  up  with  new  hope  and  heard  him 


120    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

say,  "I  can  do  all  things  through  Him 
who  loved  me." 

In  the  psychological  moment,  when  the 
heart  is  melted  and  the  faith  in  God  is 
once  more  at  the  full,  I  have  the  patient — 
for  I  never  forget  that  he  is  a  patient — 
seat  himself  in  the  Morris  chair,  relax 
his  muscles,  breathe  regularly,  and  gaze 
fixedly  at  some  object  just  before  him 
or  at  my  finger  tips.  What  follows  is 
thus  described  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker, 
who  with  the  patient's  permission  was 
present  at  a  treatment  and  described 
for  the  American  Magazine  24  exactly 
what  he  saw  with  that  painstaking 
veracity  which  has  made  him  probably  the 
most  credible  reporter  alive  of  the  social 
and   religious  phenomena  of  the  world: 

"You  are  going  to  sleep,"  said  Mr.  Powell, 
"you  are  sinking  deeper  into  sleep.  No 
noises  will  disturb  you.  You  will  drop  off 
into  sleep.     You  are  asleep. " 

These  words,  repeated  numerous  times,  soon 
produced  a  deep  sleep  on  the  part  of  Mr.  X. 
I  could  hear  his  steady,  slow  breathing.  Then 
Mr.  Powell  began  giving  suggestions  in  a  low 
monotone. 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic    1 2 1 

"  I  told  you  before  that  you  were  not  to 
drink  any  more.  I  told  you  that  you  could 
not  yield  again  to  the  drink  habit.  You  cannot 
drink  any  more.  You  will  go  on  now  into  the 
perfection  of  freedom.  Your  whole  physical 
nature  will  revolt  at  the  thought  of  alcohol. 
If  you  should  take  to  drink  again  it  would 
blast  your  life  and  leave  your  wife  and  children 
without  support;  it  would  cost  you  your 
position.  You  are  too  good  a  man  to  drink; 
you  are  too  fine  a  character  to  be  ruined  by 
drink.  In  God's  name  I  command  you  there- 
fore not  to  drink  any  more.  You  cannot 
drink  any  more.  You  will  use  every  means  to 
keep  from  drink;  you  will  not  be  able  to  drink 
any  more." 

These  suggestions  were  repeated  in  different 
forms  many  times,  the  treatment  lasting  per- 
haps ten  or  fifteen  minutes.  The  patient  was 
then  aroused. 

This  is  of  course  a  lower  stage  of 
suggestibility  than  the  one  I  habitually 
induce  in  ordinary  cases  in  my  clinic. 
It  would  seem  to  be  a  light  hypnosis, 
concerning  which  there  is  to-day  even 
among  educated  people  more  misap- 
prehension perhaps  than  concerning  any 
other  subject  in  psychology.    The  Rev- 


122    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

erend  Chauncey  J.  Hawkins's  words 
about  it  are  so  free  from  technicalities 
that  I  quote  him  once  again: 

The  mind  in  the  waking  state  has  been 
compared  by  Tarchanoff  to  a  room  into  which 
rays  of  light  are  entering  from  all  sides.  The 
result  is  a  general  illumination,  without  promi- 
nence being  given  to  any  one  ray.  If  the  room 
is  darkened  and  through  a  small  opening  a 
single  ray  is  allowed  to  pass,  it  shines  with 
exaggerated  force  and  brilliancy.  The  mind 
in  its  normal  state  is  like  the  room  receiving 
rays  from  every  direction.  It  is  busy  receiving, 
weighing,  and  registering  all  ideas  and  sensa- 
tions which  come  to  it  from  many  sources.  If, 
however,  the  mind  is  made  calm,  passive, 
vacant,  and  then  one  idea  is  permitted  to 
enter  it,  it  comes  with  greater  force  and  bril- 
liancy. It  not  only  works  its  way  into  con- 
sciousness, but  comes  to  dominate  consciousness. 
There  is  in  this  state  no  weighing  of  evidence, 
no  balancing  of  one  idea  against  another,  the 
result  being  that  the  idea  which  enters  the 
mind  becomes  an  uncontrollable  and  irresistible 
impulse.  Tell  a  drunkard  in  his  normal  state 
that  he  will  be  able  to  overcome  the  desire 
to  drink,  and  all  his  past  experiences  will  rise 
in  his  mind  to  combat  your  suggestion  and 
render  it  of  no  value.    Tell  the  same  man  in  a 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     123 

state  where  he  is  especially  susceptible  to  sug- 
gestion that  whiskey  is  a  strong  emetic,  and, 
though  it  may  be  his  favourite  $lass,  he  will 
instantly  reject  it  with  disgust.25 

The  objections  to  hypnotism  are  usu- 
ally the  objections  of  those  who  confuse 
the  first  stage  with  the  last.  There  is 
as  much  difference  between  the  lighter 
sleep  of  hypnosis  and  the  third  stage, 
somnambulism,  with  all  its  possibilities 
so  vulgarly  exploited  on  the  stage  and 
public  platform,  as  there  is  between  the 
drowsiness  that  precedes  sleep  and  the 
somnambulism  which  now  and  then  ap- 
pears in  the  profound  sleep  of  normal 
persons. 

The  one  condition  of  inducing  this 
lighter  stage  is  the  subject's  willingness. 
No  one  can  be  hypnotised  without  his 
consent.  No  suggestions  but  the  ones 
for  which  the  patient  yields  himself 
am  I  able  to  make  without  awaking  him. 
Far  from  weakening  the  will,  suggestion 
strengthens  it;  and  far  from  divorcing 
suggestion  from  religion,  I  find  that  only 
when   I  impart  the  suggestions  with  a 


124    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

religious  background  or  in  religious  terms 
do  I  feel  the  requisite  self-confidence 
in  the  treatment  of  the  patient,  or  does 
the  treatment  prove  effective. 

In  two  instances  there  has  been  built 
up  not  merely  moral  but  also  physical 
aversion  to  drink.  One  man  to  whom 
the  doctor  gave  a  tonic  to  strengthen 
the  mental  treatment  the  alcoholic  was 
receiving  at  my  hands  was  unable  to 
take  the  second  dose  of  medicine  because 
the  first  nauseated  him.  He  was  sure 
there  was  alcohol  in  it  and  that  it  was 
the  alcohol  his  palate  refused  to  accept. 
On  inquiry  of  the  doctor  I  learned  that 
the  medicine  was  in  a  tincture  of  alcohol, 
and  since  I  had  in  the  treatment  of  the 
man  repeatedly  informed  him  that  even 
to  taste  liquor  again  would  nauseate 
him  I  had  the  explanation  of  his  inability 
to  take  the  second  dose  of  medicine. 

Another  man  discovered  soon  after  he 
began  the  treatment  that  it  made  him 
feel  ill  even  to  smell  liquor,  and  on  one 
occasion  when  in  the  middle  of  a  banquet 
he  tasted   his   Roman   punch   in   order 


The  Cure  of  the  Alcoholic     125 

not  to  seem  exceptional  he  was  unable 
to  enjoy  the  last  half  of  the  feast. 

From  my  limited  experience  with  cases 
I  am  not  inclined  to  draw  the  inference 
that  every  minister  should  start  a  clinic 
for  the  cure  of  drunkards,  but  I  am  con- 
vinced that  here  is  a  new  possibility  of 
helping  the  inebriate  which  the  Church 
has  never  used  before.  Perhaps  not 
much  can  be  made  of  this  possibility  till 
the  Church  has  devised  some  machinery, 
which  she  has  not  now,  for  the  effective 
co-operation  of  laymen  with  the  minister 
in  the  reclamation  of  the  drunkard.  In 
few  cases,  at  least  of  dipsomania,  can  a 
weekly  visit  to  the  minister,  no  matter 
what  the  treatment  be,  probably  offset 
the  continuous  allurement  of  the  saloon, 
for  which  no  substitute  has  yet  been 
found. 

It  may  be  that  in  this  country  as  in 
Europe  the  work  will  one  day  fall  into 
the  hands  of  trained  physicians.  There 
are  certain  reasons  why  they  ought  to  do 
it.  But  even  then  they  will  either  be 
obliged,  like  some  European  doctors,  to 


126    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

re-enforce  suggestion  by  faith,  or  if  they 
cannot  make  appeal  to  what  Dr.  Cabot 
calls  "the  core  of  a  man"  by  appealing 
to  his  faith  in  God,  they  will  evidently 
have  to  have  the  preacher's  help. 

In  a  few  instances,  where  there  is 
special  training,  it  may  be  possible  for 
the  minister  to  conduct  the  alcoholic 
clinic  with  the  incidental  help  of  the 
physician.  In  more  instances  it  would 
seem  advisable  to  make  an  actual  com- 
bination with  the  doctor,  to  have  him 
present  at  each  clinic,  and  to  combine 
all  the  resources  of  religion  and  medicine 
in  the  relief  of  what  is  in  a  large  per- 
centage of  cases  nothing  but  a  moral 
ill.  Whatever  plan  is  followed,  it  would 
seem  to  be  a  calamity,  which  the  Church 
need  not  add  to  her  many  other  lost 
opportunities,  to  allow  the  cure  and 
care  of  the  drunkard  to  fall  entirely  into 
the  hands  of  science,  which  admittedly 
needs  all  the  help  that  faith  in  God  can 
give  in  dealing  with  an  ill  so  largely 
spiritual  as  the  excessive  use  of  alcohol. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  MISCELLANEOUS  CASES 

OF  the  four  hundred,  approximately, 
who  have  this  year  brought  to  me 
their  troubles  of  the  soul  or  mind  or  body, 
less  than  one  eighth,  if  the  doctors'  diag- 
noses can  be  trusted,  have  been  suffering 
from  ills  primarily  and  essentially  physical 
either  in  their  origin,  their  symptoms,  or 
their  effects.  Seven  eighths  have  been 
in  stress  of  soul  or  strain  of  mind  with  the 
consequent  reaction  in  some  cases  on 
the  body.  But  even  of  the  seven  eighths 
it  has  been  possible  for  me  to  give  sys- 
tematic treatment  to  but  twenty-one, 
though  evidences  are  multiplying  of  the 
apparent  good  results  in  many  instances 
of  the  single  clarifying  interview  which  I 
had  with  them. 

Three  typical  cases,  which  have  not  had 
127 


128    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

systematic  treatment  and  would  not  have 
come  to  me  at  all  but  for  the  clinic, 
will  illustrate  the  character  of  the  troubles 
which  have  outbulked  all  others: 

i.  A  woman  in  a  distant  city,  occupy- 
ing a  position  of  unusual  responsibility, 
has  recently  been  finding  herself,  as 
she  passes  into  the  forties,  losing  momen- 
tum in  her  inner  life.  An  expert  in  her 
work  of  managing  many  people,  all  of 
them  of  scientific  training,  the  zest 
seems  for  her  now  to  be  passing  out  of 
life.  She  does  her  work  so  easily  and  so 
quickly  that  it  no  longer  taxes  mind 
or  body  and  makes  no  more  the  demands 
upon  her  deeper  life  which  it  once  made. 
She  fears  that  she  is  reaching  that 

"  last  stage  of  all — 
When  we  are  frozen  up  within,  and  quite 
The  phantom  of  ourselves." 

I  advised  a  year  of  travel,  and  was 
at  once  informed  that  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  her  to  leave  her  work  at  all 
in  the  near  future.  Then  I  furnished 
her  with  some  power-giving  books,  and 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      129 

bade  her  go  into  the  silence  for  a  little 
while  three  times  a  day,  and  with  mus- 
cles relaxed  and  mind  quiet  "to  let  the 
spiritual,  unbidden  and  unconscious,  grow 
up  through  the  common."  I  am  not 
sure  that  this  will  altogether  solve  a 
problem  peculiarly  difficult  to  solve,  but 
I  am  sure  it  is  the  best  advice  in  the 
emergency  to  give. 

Here  is  her  case  described  in  a  letter 
which  she  wrote  me  after  she  had  read 
the  books.  I  quote  in  some  detail 
because  I  know  nowhere  a  more  con- 
vincing statement  of  a  mental  condition 
common  among  the  strong-minded  and 
clear-headed  as  they  pass  out  of  the 
enthusiasm  of  youth: 

What  I  got  out  of  the  reading  was  an  ever 
increasing  conviction  that  the  thing  I  am 
seeking  is  a  logical  and  legitimate  application 
of  the  principles  therein  explained.  Why 
must  there  be  definite  illness  before  it  seems 
worth  while  to  stir  up  the  sub-conscious  to 
action?  Why  is  it  not  a  worthy  application  of 
your  principle  to  stimulate  a  sound  mind  to  its 
fullest  activity  as  well  as  to  remove  constipation 
or   headache  from  a  weakened  physique?     Is 


130    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

not  a  large  part  of  the  church's  work  to  help 
those  who  are  already  looking  up  that  they 
may  see  higher,  or  is  it  only  to  lift  up  those  who 
are  down? 

To  be  specific  and  not  unduly  lengthen  my 
story,  I  am  in  my  forties.  I  am  a  worker  and 
have  always  been  one.  For  a  good  many  years 
I  have  worked  in  one  groove  until  it  is  worn 
so  deeply  that  it  is  difficult  for  me  to  get  my 
head  above  the  ruts  and  see  the  broader  vision 
that  I  am  sure  lies  all  about  me.  I  may  not 
drop  my  detail  at  present,  but  there  is  no 
further  growth  for  me  in  that  direct  line,  and 
grow  I  must.  I  am  not  willing  to  stop  yet. 
Now,  unless  I  have  less  than  the  normal  amount 
of  mentality  I  must  have  in  me  somewhere  a 
lot  of  facts  and  things  that  ought  to  be  put  to 
service  for  some  one  else,  and  that  I  am  sure 
I  have  constant  opportunity  for  giving  out. 
But  here  I  fail.  Now  either  I  must  learn  to 
do  this  and  grow  with  the  growth  of  my  position 
or  I  must  surrender  it  altogether  to  some  one 
else.  That  some  one  has  not  yet  appeared  on 
the  horizon,  besides  which  I  feel  very  strongly 
that  I  want  to  make  one  more  try  at  it  before 
admitting  that  I  am  beaten  and  must  remain 
for  the  rest  of  my  mortal  life  at  this  point  of 
development. 

2.    A  woman  of  rare  refinement  and 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      131 

high  ideals  had  found  for  some  years 
past  that  she  was  losing  her  grip  upon 
herself  in  the  management  of  her  pupils 
in  a  fashionable  school  for  girls.  She 
had  tried  in  vain  to  regain  it.  She  came 
to  me  in  sheer  despair,  and  later  wrote 
me  thus  about  the  effect  upon  her  of  the 
interview: 

Before  my  talk  with  you  I  was  conscious 
of  having  a  scattered  and  indefinite  something 
which  I  tried  to  use  to  secure  a  certain  peace 
of  mind.  But  it  was  so  confused  and  unformed 
that  while  its  help  was  felt,  it  seemed  to  last 
so  short  a  time.  To  you  I  owe  the  definite  line 
of  thought,  and  the  power  which  can  always 
bring  to  the  disturbed  mind  that  perfect  rest 
and  peace,  and  the  assurance  that  all  is  well. 

3.  A  good  man,  not  given  to  habitual 
church  attendance,  or  to  conventional 
expressions  of  religion,  came  to  me  a 
few  days  before  the  Presidential  election 
with  the  heart-breaking  news  that  he 
expected  in  a  day  or  two,  unless  some- 
thing unforeseen  occurred,  to  fail  in 
business,  and  must  have  spiritual  help 
to  meet  the  great  disaster.     It  was  a  case 


132    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

in  which  the  cheerful  heart  and  peaceful 
mind  had  in  some  way  to  be  given  him. 
Professional  ministrations,  whether  of 
prayer  or  Bible  reading,  were  not  indi- 
cated in  the  circumstances.  Even  to  sug- 
gest them  would  have  been  to  put  up  a  bar 
between  us  at  a  moment  when  to  be  of  any 
service  to  him  everything  professional 
and  perfunctory  had  to  be  at  once 
eliminated.  I  talked  to  him  as  man  to 
man,  gave  him  a  quieting  treatment,  in 
which  faith  was  mingled  with  suggestion, 
and  sent  him  away  with  a  heart  for  any 
fate.  As  the  peace  he  coveted  stole 
into  his  heart  he  wrote,  though  to  write 
verse  was  the  last  thing  one  expects  of  a 
hard-headed  business  man,  the  following 
lines  and  sent  them  to  me: 

"  I  pray  that  I  may  have  a  grateful  heart 
For  all  the  blessings  that  are  sent  to  me ; 
That  Thou  wilt  always  fill  my  soul  with  praise, 
And  that  my  heart  from  envy  may  be  free. 

What  if  my  neighbour  has  a  greater  share 
Of  this  world's  riches  or  of  earthly  fame, 

I  only  ask  for  a  contented  heart, 

That  I  may  daily  praise  Thy  holy  name." 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      133 

Fortunately  after  the  election  his  busi- 
ness improved  and  there  is  now  in  every 
way  a  brighter  prospect  for  him. 26 

The  miscellaneous  cases  which  have 
had  systematic  treatment  have  been 
cases  which  for  one  reason  or  another 
could  scarcely  be  included  under  the 
general  heading  of  either  neurasthenia 
or  psychasthenia. 

Morphinism  and  cocainism  I  have, 
except  once,  declined  to  treat  at  all, 
because  I  am  convinced  after  a  study 
of  both  the  European  and  American 
literature  that  practical  incarceration  in 
a  sanitarium  where  the  patient  can  be 
under  constant  surveillance  day  and 
night  is  essential  to  a  cure.  The  craving 
for  both  morphia  and  cocaine  is  so  in- 
satiate that  once  it  comes  upon  a 
man  he  will  often  lie  or  steal,  in  spite 
of  his  best  resolutions,  to  procure  the 
drug. 

I  have  known  of  one  case  of  morphin- 
ism in  which,  though  the  treatment  was 
given  in  a  hospital,  the  doctor's  best 
efforts  were  foiled  by  the  patient's  wife's 


134    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

connivance  with  him  to  transfer  the 
daily  dose  of  morphia  from  her  mouth 
to  his  when  she  kissed  him  on  her  daily 
visit  to  him.  I  have  heard  of  one  case  of 
cocainism  in  which  when  the  craving 
came  the  unhappy  victim,  who  chanced 
to  be  a  doctor,  would  break  an  appoint- 
ment or  if  he  were  out  driving  and 
chanced  to  be  without  the  drug  would 
whip  his  horses  till  they  ran  to  the  drug- 
store where  by  breathless  command  he 
without  delay  secured  it.  A  sufferer  from 
the  habit  of  taking  heroin,  which  is  a 
derivative  of  morphia,  reported  to  me 
that  after  waiting  for  some  weeks  for  me 
to  help  her  she  herself  in  a  moment  of 
high  resolution  renounced  the  drug  and 
has  not  touched  it  since.  But  it  should 
be  added  that  she  says  the  daily  dose 
she  took  was  always  small. 

There  seems  to  be  general  agreement 
among  those  who  have  applied  suggestive 
treatment  to  the  relief  of  childish  habits 
while  the  child  is  asleep  and  in  a  suggest- 
ible state,  which  seems  not  to  persist 
to  adult  life,  that  excellent  results  have 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      135 

been  obtained.  In  seventy-five  cases  Dr. 
Worcester  reports  cures  of  great  improve- 
ment in  such  ills  as  nail-biting,  swearing, 
lying,  and  stealing.  My  own  experience 
has  been  comparatively  slight  in  dealing 
with  children,  but  it  confirms  the  ex- 
perience of  those  who  have  treated  more 
cases  than  I. 

In  excessive  grief  the  quieting  treat- 
ment has  more  than  once  brought  more 
comfort  than  I  have  ever  been  able  to 
impart  by  the  usual  ministrations  of  my 
office.  In  one  instance  the  grief  for  a 
lost  child  was  of  long  standing  and 
threatened  the  reason  of  the  stricken 
mother.  The  expectation  of  relief,  which 
she  had  never  had  when  she  had  turned 
to  others  in  her  sorrow,  was  perhaps  the 
largest  element  in  helping  her,  and  her 
willingness  to  be  still  and  to  listen  to  me 
without  interruption  for  a  considerable 
period  of  time  completed  the  good  work. 

Aversions,  where  there  are  no  physical 
complications,  yield  at  once  if  my  ex- 
perience is  to  be  trusted.  A  young 
woman,    whose    aversion,    not    without 


136    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

warrant,  to  one  with  whom  she  was  in 
daily  contact  had  reached  a  point  at 
which  her  nerves  were  worn  threadbare 
and  her  parent  was  endeavouring  to  per- 
suade her  to  resign  her  position.  One 
little  talk  accentuated  by  a  little  sermon 
preached  to  her  with  her  eyes  closed 
made  her  at  once  indifferent  to  the 
object  of  her  aversion,  her  nerves  ceased 
to  rebel,  and  the  thought  of  giving  up  her 
place  passed  permanently  from  her  mind. 
None  of  my  miscellaneous  cases  have 
been  more  interesting  and  gratifying  to 
me  than  the  preparation  of  panic-stricken 
patients  for  a  surgical  operation.  Several 
times  I  have  been  requested  by  our  local 
doctors  to  attempt  to  quiet  the  minds  of 
those  soon  to  go  upon  the  operating  table. 
In  each  case  I  have  sat  by  the  bedside, 
gradually  passed  from  general  to  specific 
discussion  of  the  approaching  experience, 
bade  the  anxious  patient  at  the  crucial 
moment  close  her  eyes  and  listen  to  a 
little  sermon.  Never  has  there  been  a 
failure.  In  each  instance  the  patient 
has  after  a  few  moments  opened  her  eyes 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases     137 

with  a  peace-crowned  face,  and  has 
taken  the  ether  and  come  out  from  under 
it  without  fear  and  with  a  smile. 

Two  incidental  experiences  in  dealing 
with  neurasthenics  would  seem  of  interest 
among  the  miscellaneous  cases.  An  aged 
woman,  who  came  to  me  for  help  in 
learning  to  control  a  tendency  to  constant 
weeping  and  to  trembling  of  the  hands, 
not  merely  made  rapid  progress  back  to 
health  in  these  respects,  but  incidentally, 
though  there  was  no  special  treatment  for 
it,  made  conspicuous  improvement  in 
what  had  long  appeared  to  be  an  incura- 
ble deafness.  Another  woman,  who  came 
from  the  office  of  a  famous  oculist  with 
the  word  that  she  would  soon  be  wholly 
blind  in  one  eye  and  never  see  well 
with  the  other,  went  at  my  suggestion 
to  another  well-known  oculist  who  in- 
formed her  that  there  was  nothing  wrong 
with  her  eyes  except  a  general  debility 
resulting  from  the  grippe  and  that  under 
the  Emmanuel  treatment  she  would 
undoubtedly  be  much  improved.  Three 
visits  to  me  sufficed  to  make  one  eye 


138    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

normal  and  greatly  to  improve  the  sight 
of  the  other.  But  even  more  remarkable 
was  the  case  of  a  woman  who,  after  treat- 
ment for  some  weeks  for  general  neuras- 
thenia due  to  worry,  gained  such  vigour 
both  of  mind  and  body  that  when  at 
last  I  sent  her  to  her  surgeon  for  the 
removal  of  a  small  non-malignant  tumour 
which  he  had  a  year  before  discovered, 
he  at  once  reported  to  me  that  in  the 
subsidence  of  all  local  inflammation  the 
tumour  had  apparently  been  absorbed 
and  was  no  more  to  be  detected  by  the 
touch. 

The  absolute  necessity  that  work  should 
immediately  follow  treatment  in  some 
cases  has  been  twice  illustrated  in  cir- 
cumstances which  deserve  description.  A 
year  ago  a  young  man,  suffering  from  a 
nervous  heart,  was  sent  to  me  by  an 
excellent  physician  who  had  failed  after 
months  of  the  usual  medical  treatment 
to  give  permanent  relief.  In  two  weeks 
of  suggestion  re-enforced  by  faith  the  pa- 
tient was  discharged  free  from  every  un- 
toward  symptom  and  with  the  earnest 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      139 

counsel  at  once  to  go  to  work.  Two 
months  later,  after  failure  to  engage  in  any 
steady  occupation,  the  heart  pain  re- 
turned, but  yielded  to  treatment.  Again 
in  vain  I  counselled  daily  labour,  and  in 
the  summer  when  I  was  away  on  a  vaca- 
tion he  placed  himself  under  the  care  of  an- 
other excellent  physician  who  brought  him 
once  more  back  to  normal  health.  Then 
the  physician  and  the  minister  united 
in  an  earnest  exhortation,  this  time  not  in 
vain,  to  him  to  go  to  work,  and  now  after 
months  of  congenial  labour,  he  retains  the 
good  health  to  which  the  doctor  brought 
him  back. 

Another  young  man,  several  of  whose 
relatives  had  had  mental  trouble,  became 
convinced  that  he  was  going  the  same 
way.  One  doctor  treated  him  with- 
out result.  Another  doctor  sent  him 
to  me.  He  was  peculiarly  responsive 
to  my  treatments  and  would  sometimes 
for  a  week  of  two  be  comparatively 
free  from  all  anxiety.  But  all  the  while 
he  was  shifting  from  one  position  to 
another  without  finding  anything  con- 


140    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

genial.  At  last  in  August  I  broke  through 
his  inertia,  sent  him  at  a  day's  notice 
to  find  work  in  a  large  city,  and  assured 
him  that  a  steady  and  congenial  occu- 
pation would  complete  his  cure.  Not 
merely  have  my  predictions  been  abund- 
antly fulfilled,  but  also  he  now  wonders 
how  he  could  have  been  so  ill  a  year  ago. 

Again  and  again,  I  have  been  urged 
to  attempt  the  cure  of  the  insane.  Twice 
at  the  beginning  of  my  work  I  accident- 
ally, once  through  a  wrong  diagnosis, 
found  myself  with  an  insane  person  on 
my  hands.  As  soon  as  possible  after 
the  discovery  of  the  mistake  I  abandoned 
treatment,  though  in  each  case  the  quiet- 
ing did  seem  to  furnish  temporary  free- 
dom from  the  delusions  and  also  to  induce 
more  healthful  sleep.  Now  one  of  the 
patients  is  in  an  institution  for  the  in- 
sane, and  the  other  ought  to  be. 

There  are  two  questions  which  may 
properly  be  asked  concerning  all  the 
cases  of  which  I  have  been  writing : 

i.  When  apparently  cured,  do  they 
remain  cured?    Frankly,  I  do  not  know. 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases     141 

Nobody  knows.  Every  doctor  feels  that 
his  responsibility  to  a  patient  ceases 
when  the  patient  is  discharged.  If  the 
rules  of  health,  which  once  violated 
brought  ill  health,  are  violated  again,  ill 
health  will  naturally  follow.  Since  it  is 
an  essential  part  of  the  Emmanuel  treat- 
ment not  merely  to  cure  patients  when 
a  cure  is  possible,  but  also  to  instruct 
them  carefully  what  mental  and  what 
spiritual  principles  to  follow  in  order  to 
keep  well,  the  responsibility  evidently 
rests  upon  the  one-time  patient  in  each 
case.  In  one  way  or  another — usually 
through  printed  cards  to  be  filled  out 
at  stated  intervals — I  keep  in  touch 
with  many  of  my  patients  for  some  time 
after  their  discharge.  But  the  thing  I 
specially  insist  upon  is  that  they  manage 
their  lives,  read  the  books,  and  keep  the 
company  that  make  for  health,  and  in  no 
instance  where  this  simple  direction  has 
been  followed  has  there  been,  so  far  as 
I  have  learned,  a  single  lapse  from  the 
good  health  which  has  come  to  people 
in  my  clinic. 


142     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

2.  Why  should  not  the  doctors  deal 
with  all  such  cases?  They  should.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  many  cases 
in  which  ills  of  the  body  are  incidental 
to  ills  of  the  mind  or  soul,  and  in  dealing 
with  such  cases  the  ordinary  doctors 
have  had  no  special  training.  There 
is,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  discover,  no 
medical  school  in  the  land  where  a  special 
knowledge  of  psychology  is  required  for 
graduation,  and  until  the  last  year  I  am 
credibly  informed  that  in  no  important 
medical  school  has  psychotherapy  been 
systematically  taught.  In  consequence 
the  many  cases  of  illness  where  the  trouble 
is  as  much — or  more — mental  and  spirit- 
ual in  its  origin  as  it  is  physical,  the  ordi- 
nary doctor  is  no  more  equipped  to  deal 
with  it  than  the  ordinary  minister. 

The  neurologist  is  clearly  indicated  in 
some  cases,  but  the  neurologist  is  usually 
to  be  found  only  in  a  distant  city. 
Often  the  expense  is  a  deterrent.  There 
are  thousands  everywhere  in  need  of  a 
neurologist,  who  for  one  reason  or  another 
cannot   go   to    him.     Meanwhile    if   the 


The  Miscellaneous  Cases      143 

family  doctor,  as  is  constantly  occurring 
in  Northampton  and  the  places  near, 
assures  the  patient  that  his  disease  is  one 
of  the  imagination  which  can  be  helped 
in  the  Emmanuel  clinic,  it  would  appear 
to  be  unreasonable  indeed  to  forbid  the 
sufferer  to  resort  to  prayer,  Bible  reading, 
and  spiritual  upbuilding  under  the  direc- 
tion of  one  who  never  ventures  even  on 
this  course  of  action  without  a  doctor's 
sanction.  Even  if  such  treatment  does  not 
always  bring  the  physical  results  expected, 
there  is  no  possibility  conceivable  of  harm 
from  what  is  nothing  after  all  but  a  literal 
acceptance  of  the  statement  of  Isaiah: 
"They  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  re- 
new their  strength,  they  shall  mount  up 
with  wings  as  eagles;  they  shall  run  and 
not  be  weary;  and  they  shall  walk  and 
not  faint." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  MOVEMENT  AND  THE  CHURCH 

THE  world  is  growing  more  religious. 
In  spite  of  all  appearances,  there  is 
on  every  side  a  widening  and  a  deepening 
of  faith  in  the  eternal  verities.  The  reac- 
tion from  materialism,  both  philosophical 
and  practical,  is  now  so  evident  as  to 
arrest  even  the  most  casual  attention. 

In  Christian  Science  the  reaction  from 
philosophical  materialism  finds  its  most 
exuberant  expression.  To  be  sure,  the 
founder  of  this  novel  faith  appears 
throughout  her  writings  singularly  unin- 
formed as  to  the  history  of  philosophy 
and  the  content  of  psychology.  Her 
theology  is  crude  and  her  therapeutics 
dangerously  indiscriminating.  But  back 
of  all  the  manifest  absurdities  of  Christian 

Science  stands  the  colossal  truth  that 
144 


THE    SITE    OF    JONATHAN    EDWARDS'     HOUSE,     WITH    THE    ELM 
WHICH    HE  PLANTED   FACING  IT. 


The  Movement  and  the  Church  145 

God  is  all  in  all.  Many  in  the  Christian 
Science  fold  who  have  tried  to  demon- 
strate this  comprehensive  truth  in  every 
detail  of  their  daily  life  have  found  such 
health  of  soul  and  mind  and  body  as  they 
never  knew  before.  And  after  Mrs.  Eddy, 
now  in  her  eighty-eighth  year,  has  gone 
from  earth,  those  of  more  modern  train- 
ing who  succeed  her  in  the  leadership 
will,  unless  they  fall  into  schismatic 
quarrelling  among  themselves,  doubtless 
purge  the  movement  of  some  of  its 
objectionable  features  and  make  it  more 
attractive  to  many  now  conscious  only 
of  the  perils  that  would  seem  to  be  in- 
herent in  a  system  which  breaks  both  with 
historic  Christianity  and  with  scientific 
medicine. 

New  Thought,  too,  marks  the  revolt 
from  philosophical  materialism.  Like 
Christian  Science,  New  Thought  has  its 
limitations.  Though  free  from  the  denials 
Christian  Science  makes,  it  offers  a  theo- 
logy almost  as  nebulous  and  invertebrate. 
Its  votaries  are  prone  to  lose  interest  in 
the  denominations  in  which  they  were 


146    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

brought  up.  In  spite  of  all  the  warnings 
of  Horatio  W.  Dresser,  there  are  New 
Thought  healers  everywhere  who  alto- 
gether decry  medicine  and  venture  to 
treat  pneumonia  with  mere  words  or 
give  to  typhoid  fever  patients  solid  food 
while  the  Peyer's  patches  still  are  at  their 
thinnest  and  their  worst.  But  under- 
neath all  the  vagueness  and  the  incoher- 
ence of  the  New  Thought  preachments, 

"Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strow  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa, " 

there  is  a  substratum  of  sound  idealism 
which  is  uncovered  in  such  helpful  books 
as  The  Philosophy  of  SelJ-Help,  A  Physi- 
cian to  the  Soul,  and  The  New  Old  Healing. 
The  Emmanuel  movement  is  the  first 
serious  effort  undertaken  by  men  in  po- 
sitions of  responsibility  within  the  Chris- 
tian Church  to  sift  the  wheat  from  the 
chaff,  to  claim  for  the  Christian  Church, 
regardless  of  denominational  differences, 
the  residuum  of  truth  underlying  all  the 
various  cults,  and  to  make  it  available 
to  the  uses  of  the  soul  and  mind  and 


The  Movement  and  the  Church  147 

body  within  the  limits  definitely  set  by 
common  sense  and  science.  In  doing  this 
the  Emmanuel  movement  is  as  truly  a 
revolt  from  philosophical  materialism  as 
either  Christian  Science  or  New  Thought. 
But  its  method  is  the  method  of  evolution 
not  of  revolution,  and  it  robs  no  faith 
either  of  its  principles  or  its  adherents. 

The  reaction  against  practical  material- 
ism is  singularly  free  from  all  absurdity 
and  extravagance.  It  has  not  been 
started  by  any  cult  or  any  church.  It  is 
so  universal  as  to  warrant  the  belief  that 
it  is  the  spontaneous  outbreak  of  a 
newly  ethicised  public  opinion,  and  even 
men  like  President  Roosevelt  and  Gover- 
nor Hughes  who  are  peculiarly  identified 
with  this  reaction  are  effective  in  the 
public  service  only  as  they  perfectly 
express  it.  To  lift  all  life,  public  and 
private,  to  a  higher  moral  altitude  and 
to  set  men  free  from  graft  and  greed  is 
its  fine  purpose,  and  the  test  which  it 
habitually  applies  is  the  pragmatic  test 
of  higher  usefulness. 

To  the  Church  as  well  as  to  the  world 


148    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

the  test  to-day  is  ruthlessly  applied. 
Assertion  is  no  longer  taken  at  face  value. 
Assumption  now  convinces  none.  Facts 
which  can  be  scrutinised,  forces  which 
can  at  least  be  felt,  are  now  required  as 
evidence.  And  no  longer  is  evasion 
tolerated  in  the  newly  ethicised  court  of 
public  opinion. 

In  her  work  abroad  the  Church  to-day 
invites  the  sharpest  test.  Under  the 
tutelage  of  such  men  as  John  R.  Mott, 
Robert  E.  Speer,  and  Arthur  S.  Lloyd,  the 
thinking  world  is  gradually  coming  to  the 
conclusion  that  Christian  missions  are 
from  every  point  of  view  worth  while. 
The  facts  available  are  as  indisputable 
as  the  forces  now  in  evidence  are  ap- 
preciable. 

But  more  important  still,  representa- 
tives who  have  the  right  to  speak  for 
forgein  lands  where  missionaries  were  once 
unwelcome  are  now  speaking  plainly.27 
The  Hindu  editor,  W.  W.  Subramania 
Iyer,  testifies  with  gladness  to  the  "silent 
and  wonderful  change  in  Indian  minds" 
which  Christianity  is  working.     Prince 


The  Movement  and  the  Church  1 49 

Malcolm  Khan  of  Persia  considers  the 
presence  of  Christian  missionaries  in  his 
country  ' '  a  providential  blessing. ' '  Chul- 
alongkorn  says  of  Siam  that  "American 
missionaries  have  done  more  to  advance 
the  welfare  of  his  country  than  any  other 
foreign  influence."  Viceroy  Tuan  Fong 
traces  the  awakening  of  China  "in  no 
small  measure  to  the  hands  of  the 
missionaries."  Marquis  Ito  states  that 
"Japan's  progress  and  development  are 
largely  due  to  the  influence  of  mission- 
aries exerted  in  right  directions  when 
Japan  was  first  studying  the  outer 
world."  And  the  fitful  word  of  the 
flitting  tourist  against  the  evangelising 
of  the  world  is  in  consequence  at  last 
discredited.  The  Christian  Church  to- 
day at  work  in  foreign  fields  meets  every 
test  which  pragmatism  can  apply. 

At  home  the  situation  is  more  com- 
plicated. Though  the  Christian  Church 
has  widened  her  range  of  usefulness  and 
multiplied  of  late  her  agencies  for  good, 
the  newly  ethicised  public  sentiment  is 
still  inclined  to  ask  such  questions  as  the 


150    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

following:  Why  the  continuation  of  the 
waste  of  men  and  money  in  the  over- 
lapping and  the  duplication  everywhere 
of  sectarian  effort  ?  Why  is  the  growing 
tendency  to  church  unity  offset  every  year 
by  the  creation  of  new  denominations, 
numbering  six  in  1908?  Why  is  the 
Church  usually  a  close  second  instead  of  a 
conspicuous  first  in  the  rebuke  of  wrong 
in  public  and  in  private  life  ?  Why  is  the 
Church  as  such  practically  without  in- 
fluence with  organised  labour  at  a  time 
when  the  faithful  wounds  of  a  friend  are 
sadly  needed  to  offset  the  cajolery  of  the 
politician  and  the  flattery  of  the  dema- 
gogue ?  Why  is  the  Church  losing  candi- 
dates for  the  ministry  at  such  a  rate  that 
to-day  there  are  in  fifty-eight  theological 
seminaries  fewer  students  by  seven  hund- 
red than  there  were  twelve  years  ago 
though  meanwhile  8,000,000  persons  have 
been  added  to  the  country's  population?28 
And  what  justification,  if  any,  is  there  for 
the  disposition  manifest  among  publicists 
and  philanthropists  outside  the  Church 
to-day  to  fling  at  her  devoted  head  the 


The  Movement  and  the  Church   151 

words  with  which  Henry  IV  after  one 
of  his  great  victories  greeted  the  belated 
though  well-meaning  Crillon:  "Hang 
yourself,  brave  Crillon!  we  fought  at 
Arques,  and  you  were  not  there"?29 

Public  sentiment  is  to-day  shifting  its 
viewpoint  toward  the  Christian  Church. 
Of  the  intrinsic  truths  of  this  theology 
or  that,  it  now  recks  little.  It  sees  in  the 
Church  possibilities  of  individual  and  so- 
cial uplift  which  it  has  never  seen  before. 
Its  attitude  is  most  accurately  described 
perhaps  in  the  words  attributed  a  while 
ago  to  Paul  Bourget : 

"I  look  upon  the  Christian  religion  very 
much  as  Pasteur  looks  upon  the  liquid  he  in- 
jects into  patients  bit  by  mad  dogs.  He  does 
not  know  how  to  cure  hydrophobia  any  more 
than  I  know  how  to  cure  the  evil  that  is  in  the 
world;  but  he  has  learned  by  experience  that 
these  injections  furnish  a  certain  immunity 
against  the  terrible  disease  which  would  follow 
without  them.  ...  I  have  come  to  recognise 
that  those  men  and  women  who  follow  the 
teachings  of  the  Church  are  in  a  great  measure 
protected  from  the  moral  disasters  which  almost 
invariably  follow  when  men  and  women  allow 


152    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

themselves  to  be  guided  and  swayed  by  their 
senses,  passions,  and  weaknesses." 

The  Church  is  doing  much  to  render 
men  immune  from  sin.  Public  senti- 
ment would  have  the  Church  do  more. 
It  would  have  the  Church  make  men  and 
women  over  in  soul  and  mind  and  body. 
It  would  have  more  evidences  unmis- 
takable of  that  new  birth  of  the  inner 
life  which  inevitably  brings  to  the  entire 
personality  better  health  in  every  sense. 
As  I  write  these  words,  there  comes 
slightly  limping  down  the  street  a  woman 
with  serene  and  joyous  face  who  a  year 
or  two  ago  walked  with  great  difficulty 
and  bore  a  troubled,  joyless  face.  She 
answers  my  inquiry  as  to  what  has 
wrought  the  wondrous  change  evident  to 
all  who  know  the  woman,  "  I  have  become 
psychical";  and  I  know  that,  like  count- 
less thousands,  she  has  found  outside  the 
Christian  Church  the  help  the  Church 
should  give. 

About  terminology  public  sentiment 
cares  nothing.  Not  even  as  to  the  source 
whence  comes  the  help  which  people  need, 


The  Movement  and  the  Church  153 

is  public  sentiment  seriously  concerned. 
But  inasmuch  as  the  Christian  Church 
claims  to  have  the  oracles  of  God,  and 
insists  that  she,  and  she  alone,  can  give 
the  highest  help,  public  sentiment  to-day 
is  more  inclined  than  ever  in  the  past  to 
require  of  the  Church  an  account  of  her 
stewardship. 

The  Emmanuel  movement  reduced  to 
simplest  terms  is  an  honest  effort  proceed- 
ing from  within  the  Church,  not  from 
without,  to  meet  the  new  pragmatic  test 
which  public  sentiment  is  everywhere 
applying  in  these  days.  While  the  foun- 
der of  the  movement  holds  to  the  sub- 
conscious theory  because  it  seems  to  him 
to  furnish  the  most  lucid  explanation  of 
the  results  he  has  secured,  he  would  not 
deny  that  results  may  be  independent  of 
all  theories  that  can  be  offered  to  explain 
them.  The  fact  is  there  are  in  all  of  us, 
no  matter  how  we  may  explain  them, 
possibilities  of  wholesomeness  which  can 
be  realised  if  we  but  make  the  effort. 
We  can  have,  if  we  will,  a  new  birth 
of  health  and  become  "a  new  creature 


154    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

in  Christ  Jesus"  if  we  make  appeal  to 
the  heart  of  things  and  give  our  better 
self  a  chance  at  self-expression. 

But  so  subtle  is  the  connection  between 
the  mind  or  soul  and  body  that  the  words 
of  Socrates  to  Charmides  are  as  pertinent 
as  when  they  first  were  spoken: 

Even  so  there  is  no  cure  for  the  body  apart 
from  the  soul;  and  the  reason  why  so  many 
diseases  elude  the  physicians  of  Greece  is  that 
they  know  nothing  of  the  soul,  which  ought  to 
be  their  chief  care,  since  if  this  be  not  sound  it 
is  impossible  for  any  part  to  be  well.  For  all 
things,  both  bad  and  good,  not  only  in  the  body, 
but  in  every  part  of  the  man,  have  their  starting 
point  in  the  soul,  whence  they  overflow  in  the 
same  way  as  from  the  head  into  the  eyes. 
First  then  and  above  all,  the  soul  must  be  treated 
if  the  head  and  the  rest  of  the  body  are  ever  to  be 
made  whole ;  and  the  cure  of  the  soul  is  brought 
about  by  means  of  certain  charms,  which  charms 
are  good  words.  By  these  words  temperance 
is  begotten  in  the  soul;  and  this  once  begotten 
and  abiding  there,  it  is  easy  to  supply  health 
to  the  head  and  the  rest  of  the  body.  Let  no 
one  persuade  you  to  treat  him  for  headache  with 
this  medicine  until  he  has  first  yielded  up  to 
you  his  soul  to  be  treated  by  the  charm,  for 
just  here  the  mistake  is  made  in  regard  to  men. 


The  Movement  and  the  Church  155 

They  attempt  to  treat  the  body  independently 
of  the  soul.30 

To  correct  this  grievous  error  and  to 
achieve  the  noble  end  in  view,  the  Em- 
manuel movement  is  not  content  with  a 
vague  effort.  It  introduces  into  religious 
methods,  often  antiquated  or  inadequate, 
the  science  and  the  system  which  are 
found  in  every  other  modern  movement 
of  significance.  It  makes  the  minister  an 
expert  in  dealing  with  the  moral  and  the 
spiritual  pathology  about  him,  and  in- 
cidentally enables  him  to  relieve  many 
of  those  ailments  of  the  body  which  are 
dependent  upon  mental  or  moral  con- 
ditions. 

The  Emmanuel  method  aims  at  two 
results  at  once:  1.  To  inform  the  mind 
and  educate  the  spirit.  This  in  many 
instances  is  sufficient  to  effect  the  bodily 
improvement.  In  several  of  my  cases 
of  general  neurasthenia  almost  incredible 
results  have  quickly  followed  close  ad- 
herence to  this  plan.  2.  To  remove 
in  a  comparatively  small  number  of 
cases,  if  I  may  trust  my  own  experience, 


156     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

local  ailments  by  direct  suggestion  re- 
enforced  by  faith.  This  result  almost 
always  follows  swiftly  the  preceding  one. 
When  there  has  been  a  failure  to  do  so, 
there  has  always  been  good  reason  to 
suspect  the  presence  of  some  element 
which  diagnosis  had  failed  to  bring  to 
light. 

It  is  beside  the  mark  for  any  one  of 
Christian  faith  to  argue  from  the  rich 
experience  of  Europe  that  suggestion 
without  faith  will  bring  the  same  result. 
For  if,  as  the  Christian  maintains,  re- 
ligion is  the  strongest  motive  in  the 
human  heart,  Christian  faith  must  surely 
have  some  therapeutic  value  where  the 
devils  of  worry  or  fear  have  so  controlled 
the  mind  that  the  poor  nerves  at  last 
have  felt  their  clutch  and  tried  to  fling 
it  off. 

The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  the 
doctor  will  be  specially  trained,  as  now 
he  seldom  is,  to  give  suggestive  treatment 
when  it  is  clearly  indicated.  Institu- 
tions like  Harvard,  Yale,  Tufts,  Cornell, 
Pennsylvania,  Johns  Hopkins,  Clark,  and 


The  Movement  and  the  Church    157 

Wisconsin  have  already  blazed  the  way. 31 
But  even  after  the  physician  is  technically 
trained  to  give  suggestion,  Christian 
people  will  require  that  suggestion  be 
re-enforced  by  faith,  and  physicians  who 
lack  Christian  character  will  in  conse- 
quence find  the  entr&e  more  difficult  than 
it  now  is  into  Christian  homes.  The  idea 
itself  is  so  simple,  its  untechnical  exercise 
in  the  ordinary  relationships  of  life  so  free 
from  peril,  that  everybody  charged  with 
the  responsibility  of  souls  or  minds  in 
trouble  will  make  instinctive  use  of  it  in 
church  and  home  alike.  All  society  will  in 
fact  form  an  amiable  conspiracy  to  suggest 
on  every  hand  the  thoughts  that  make 
for  mental  and  moral  health,  and  many  a 
nervous  ill  which  now  afflicts  mankind  will 
disappear  along  the  way. 

If  the  minister  is  to  have  a  share,  how- 
ever small,  in  the  good  work  there  are 
certain  dangers  he  will  have  to  face. 
The  clinic  is  the  confessional  without  its 
carefully  contrived  safeguards.  Coolness 
of  head  must  go  with  warmth  of  heart. 
Reticence  must  temper  all  enthusiasm. 


158     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

The  professional  relationship  must  never 
be  forgotten  even  where  the  human  touch 
to  be  effective  must  be  very  personal. 
Confidence  must  be  by  word  and  look  in- 
vited but  not  given.  Social  conventions 
must  be  observed  but  not  obtrusively. 
Psychical  parasites  must  be  helped,  but  at 
the  same  time  helped  to  help  themselves. 
Else  the  Emmanuel  worker  will  make  a 
failure  of  the  work  and  harm  his  church. 
He  will  come  to  grief  upon  his  limita- 
tions, and  bring  his  church  to  grief  upon 
his  folly. 

Another  danger  will  inevitably  emerge 
with  the  temptation  to  duplicate  the 
Emmanuel  Church  machinery.  The  class 
and  clinic  can  not  both  perhaps  at  the 
same  time  be  managed  in  the  average 
parish  without  hurt  to  other  parish 
interests.  No  minister  can  measure  in 
advance  the  demands  that  either  class  or 
clinic  will  make  on  his  time.  It  is 
therefore  better  to  make  haste  slowly 
in  Emmanuel  work. 

Another  danger  always  to  be  kept  in 
mind   is   the   too   exalted   expectation. 


The  Movement  and  the  Church    159 

Not  only,  as  Dr.  Cabot  points  out  in 
Good  Housekeeping  for  February,  are  the 
limitations  of  the  treatment  evident, 
but  also  its  efficiency  is  frequently  con- 
ditioned by  circumstances  utterly  beyond 
control.  Certain  cases  require  daily 
treatment  which  the  worker  has  no 
time  to  give.  The  mere  care  of  the 
semi-insane  or  the  semi-responsible  is 
not  within  the  province  of  the  minister. 
To  venture  on  the  treatment  of  the  luna- 
tic is  worse  than  injudicious.  Relapses 
there  will  be  in  spite  of  all  precautions. 
No  nervous  person  can  continue  well 
who  parts  with  the  philosophy  of  life 
learned  in  the  Emmanuel  clinic.  One 
bad  habit  may  disappear  under  expert 
treatment  only  to  be  in  time  replaced  by 
a  worse  one.  A  few  will  turn  back  to 
their  woe  or  sin  for  no  reason  which  can 
be  discovered.  The  too  exalted  expec- 
tation may  lead  on  to  deep  disappoint- 
ment. 

But  for  every  danger  that  besets  his 
path  the  Emmanuel  worker  has  compen- 
sations not  vouchsafed  to  those  who  have 


160     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

not  tried  the  work.  He  is  forever  done 
with  that  perfunctoriness  which  has  pal- 
sied the  pastoral  relationship  for  a  whole 
generation  past  and  reduced  parish  visit- 
ing in  many  a  place  to  ringing  doorbells, 
praising  the  baby,  and  gracing  five- 
o'clock  teas  from  which  other  men  are 
absent  because  at  their  daily  duties. 
No  right-minded  minister  wants  to  draw 
his  salary  for  merely  social  calling.  He 
wants,  like  other  earnest  men,  to  make 
his  social  life  his  avocation. 

A  man  may  get  on  in  the  pulpit  or 
the  parish  in  spite  of  an  occasional  sub- 
sidence of  enthusiasm.  He  cannot  get 
on  in  the  clinic  if  he  ever  falls  below  his 
highest  possibilities.  An  indifferent  word, 
a  bored  expression,  may  do  more  harm 
than  can  ever  be  undone.  The  Em- 
manuel worker  must  be  habitually  on  his 
mettle.  His  every  resource  will  be  taxed. 
No  two  persons  can  be  treated  in  the 
same  way.  The  worker  must  be  quick  to 
diagnose  the  soul's  condition.  He  must 
pick  his  way  at  once  by  intuition  to  the 
strategic  point  from  which  to  treat  the 


The  Movement  and  the  Church     161 

case  whether  it  be  one  of  ordinary 
dryness  of  the  soul  or  of  actual  soul 
sickness  with  its  inevitable  strain  upon 
the  nerves. 

The  Emmanuel  worker  must  be  all 
alive  in  body,  mind,  and  soul.  To  make 
faith  immediately  adaptable  to  human 
needs  he  must  be  surcharged  with  it 
himself  and  be  ever  ready  to  impart  it 
with  a  keen  enthusiasm  and  a  noble  con- 
secration. And  those  who  with  scant 
acquaintance  with  Emmanuel  methods 
disdainfully  dismiss  the  movement  as  a 
scheme  for  hypnotising  people  to  be  good, 
or  for  taking  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by 
violence,  find  their  archetype  in  the  Lon- 
don bishop  who,  because  he  did  not 
understand  the  true  import  of  Method- 
ism, refused  John  Wesley's  reasonable 
request  for  the  ordination  of  two  priests 
to  administer  the  Sacraments  to  American 
Methodists,  and  thus  allowed  the  Church 
of  England  to  lose  a  multitude  of  earnest 
souls  whose  spiritual  children  now  num- 
ber 3,112,448  in  this  country  alone  and 
stand  next  to  the  Roman  Catholics  in  the 


1 62     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

census  made  by  Dr.  H.  K.  Carroll  of 
religious  denominations  in  America  in 
1908. 

There  is  yet  another  compensation  not 
to  be  despised.  Emmanuel  work  re- 
stores to  the  minister  the  authority 
which  he  has  too  often  sadly  lacked  in 
recent  years.  When  a  minister  has 
set  men  free  from  fear  and  worry,  or 
from  drink  and  lust,  he  will  have  an 
authority  which  no  ecclesiasticism  ever 
gives.  His  parish  visits  will  assume  a 
larger  than  the  simply  social  aspect  which 
is  often  all  they  have  to-day.  People 
will  put  their  minister  to  higher  uses  than 
to  make  of  him  a  social  pudding-stick. 
They  will  cease  to  expect  him  on  his 
parish  rounds  to  avoid  the  deeper  things 
of  life.  They  will  look  instinctively  for 
the  virtue  to  go  out  of  him  to  every  sick 
soul,  and  they  will  never  look  in  vain. 
They  will  make  each  parish  church,  like 
St.  John's  Church,  Northampton,  a  true 
cathedral  to  which  people  will  come  up 
from  many  miles  around  to  find  the 
healing  Christ  and  to  discover  also  that 


The  Movement  and  the  Church    163 

"Though  Christ  a  thousand  times  in  Bethlehem 
be  born, 
Be  he  not  born  in  me  my  soul  is  all  forlorn. " 

A  third  compensation  every  Emmanuel 
worker  finds  to  his  delight  is  very  real. 
The  treatment  which  he  gives  is  retro- 
active. The  quieting  of  others  quiets 
him.  The  suggestions  of  emancipation 
from  unwholesome  thoughts  turn  back 
into  auto-suggestions  which  upbuild  the 
worker  at  the  same  time  that  they  up- 
build his  patient.  The  peace  he  preaches 
to  a  congregation  of  one  at  the  moment 
of  supreme  suggestibility  becomes  his 
peace.  His  health  of  soul  and  mind 
and  body  receives  new  impulse  as  he 
gives  impulse  to  the  health  of  others. 
He  finds  that  he  is  equal  to  more  work 
of  every  sort  than  ever  in  the  past,  and 
the  sense  of  futility,  which  drives  many  a 
high-minded  minister  across  the  dead  line 
at  the  age  of  fifty,  disappears  when  not 
once  in  a  great  while  as  formerly  but 
every  day  he  has  new  evidence  of  hearts 
helped,  minds  informed  or  bodies  re- 
invigorated  by  his  words. 


1 64     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

What  ought  to  be  the  attitude  of  the 
Christian  churches  of  the  land  toward 
the  Emmanuel  movement?  Shall  every 
church  establish  an  Emmanuel  class  or 
clinic?  By  no  means.  Perhaps  few 
churches  should.  Certainly  not  every 
minister  is  equipped  by  temperament 
or  training  to  conduct  the  work  in  any 
systematic  way.  Of  the  more  than  fifty 
ministers  who  have  sought  my  counsel 
in  the  matter  I  have  felt  justified  in  the 
encouragement  of  scarcely  half  a  dozen. 
No  minister  should  in  any  circumstances 
formally  undertake  the  work  unless  he 
has  the  human  touch  to  add  to  even  the 
most  ample  intellectual  equipment. 

But  every  minister  may  put  certain 
principles  inherent  in  the  movement  to 
good  account  in  various  ways.  Certainly 
in  his  ministrations  to  the  sick  there 
would  seem  to  be  a  special  field.  The 
Bishop  of  Connecticut  advises  the  clergy: 

i.  To  go  about  such  ministrations  with  a 
renewed  recognition  of  the  vital  interests 
involved,  and  approach  the  sick  person,  not 
as  paying  a  kindly  attention,  but  with  more 


The  Movement  and  the  Church    165 

definite  purpose  of  help.  2.  To  come  to  the 
sick  with  messages,  not  only  of  resignation,  but 
also  of  hope  and  good  cheer  in  the  name  of 
the  God  of  hope  and  of  health.3  2 

It  has  been  the  unhappy  custom  of  the 
Christian  Church  in  history  too  often  to 
allow  the  new  movement  of  significance 
to  escape  from  it  and  turn  into  a  sect  or 
cult.  In  the  Emmanuel  movement  the 
Christian  Church  has  a  movement  which 
sets  up  no  new  philosophy,  breaks  no- 
where with  theology,  detaches  no  one 
from  the  fold  of  his  upbringing,  and 
proposes  nothing  save  a  redistribution 
of  the  emphasis  of  faith  in  the  interest  of 
the  entire  personality.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary, in  justice  to  the  Church  or  to  the 
movement,  that  official  sanction  should 
at  this  stage  be  given  any  more  than  it 
is  given  the  boy  choir  or  the  men's  club. 
It  was  proper  that  the  Lambeth  Confer- 
ence of  1908  should  speak  a  word  of 
warning  to  those  who  enter  on  the  work. 
Lest  men  unfit  should  start  a  class  or 
clinic,  the  Church  should  not  as  yet, 
perhaps,  make  haste  authoritatively  to 


1 66     The  Emmanuel  Movement 

encourage  even  those  with  special  fitness 
to  venture  into  fields  so  new  and  strange. 
But  it  is  necessary,  in  justice  to  the 
Church  and  to  the  movement,  that  no 
word  of  disavowal  or  disparagement 
likely  at  this  stage  to  be  based  on  lack  of 
understanding  or  on  second  hand  infor- 
mation, should  find  official  expression 
through  the  accredited  representatives  of 
the  Christian  Church  at  large.  Else  an- 
other great  idea  in  religion  may  be  turned 
over  to  schismatics,  and  the  millions  now 
outside  the  Church  who  in  one  cult  or 
another  hold  to  the  idea  that  the  mind 
spiritualised  finds  its  sacramental  sym- 
bolism in  a  more  wholesome  body  may 
stay  outside  the  Church  and  furnish 
Christian  Science,  with  its  efficient  or- 
ganisation, the  incentive  as  well  as  the 
opportunity  to  become,  pruned  of  its 
negations  and  vagaries,  the  Methodism 
of  the  Twentieth  Century. 


NOTES 

i.  Dr.  Worcester  has  published  several  books,  but 
it  is  only  in  his  latest,  The  Living  Word,  that  he  sets 
forth  the  philosophy  and  theology  which  underlie 
his  efforts  to  uplift  his  fellowmen  through  the  Em- 
manuel and  other  agencies.  He  claims  for  his  book, 
however,  little  originality,  and  states  in  the  Preface 
that  the  "book  owes  its  existence,  its  substance,  and 
whatever  merit  it  possesses  to  one  of  the  greatest  and 
least  appreciated  thinkers  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
Gustav  Theodor  Fechner."  Allowing  as  liberally  as 
one  pleases  for  the  author's  modesty,  the  fact  will 
doubtless  become  evident  in  the  next  year  or  two  that 
The  Living  Word  is  one  of  the  most  original  and  im- 
portant contributions  made  to  religious  literature  in 
recent  times,  and  it  will  be  of  special  service  to  those 
who  want  the  best  the  new  cults  have  to  give  and  yet 
remain  in  their  own  church. 

2.  While  Dr.  Mitchell  professes  great  respect  for 
Dr.  Worcester,  he  is  in  his  latest  utterances  inclined 
to  criticise  the  movement. 

3.  The  Outlook,  February  29,  1908. 

4.  Emmanuel  workers  nowhere  attempt  to  pass 
upon  the  validity  of  the  distinction  between  organic 
and  nervous  functional  disorders.  As  Dr.  Cabot  has 
pointed  out,  the  distinction  is  a  convenient  one  in 
common  use  among  physicians,  and  until  they  give  it 
up  it  will  doubtless  continue  to  serve  the  purposes  of 
the  Emmanuel  worker  in  the  smaller  group  of  cases 
where  ills  of  the  body  come  for  treatment. 

167 


1 68  Notes 

5.  Wanamaker's  Book  News,  November,  1905. 

6.  Osier's  Principles  and  Practice  of  Medicine 
(Edition  of  1892),  978. 

7.  Ibid.,  983. 

8.  Ray  Stannard  Baker  in  The  American  Magazine, 
January,  1909,  233.  This  article,  and  the  earlier  one, 
will  be  found  in  Mr.  Baker's  New  Ideals  in  Healing, 
which  appears  as  this  book  passes  through  the  press. 

9.  Treatment  of  Rest,  Seclusion,  etc.,  in  Relation  to 
Psychotherapy,  by  S.  Weir  Mitchell. 

10.  Cabot's  Psychotherapy  and  its  Relation  to  Re- 
ligion, 40. 

11.  On  the  dangers  of  the  confessional,  see  Cutten's 
Psychological  Phenomena  of  Christianity,  Chs.  XX.  and 
XXIX. 

This  is  a  subject  on  which,  perhaps,  plain  speaking  is 
not  indicated  in  a  book  like  this.  But  it  is  one  of  the 
possible  perils  of  the  Emmanuel  movement  that  it  does 
establish,  if  real  help  is  to  be  given,  a  close  spiritual 
relationship  between  the  worker  and  the  patient. 
For  this  reason  the  formal  clinic  ought  not,  perhaps, 
to  be  encouraged  except  in  those  rare  instances 
in  which,  as  I  have  pointed  out  in  Chapter  VIII., 
there  is  unusual  fitness  for  the  confessional  re- 
lationship. 

In  addition  to  Cutten's  consideration  of  the  close 
relationship  between  religious  and  sexual  emotion, 
those  who  wish  to  make  a  careful  study  of  the  subject 
may  refer  to  Galton's  Inquiries  into  the  Human  Faculty, 
66 ;  Nystrom's  Natural  Laws  of  Sexual  Life,  174;  North- 
cote's  Christianity  and  Sex  Problems,  142;  Krafft- 
Ebing's  Psychopathia  Sexualis,  8-10;  G.  Stanley  Hall's 
Adolescence,  II.,  292;  Starbuck's  Psychology  of  Religion, 
147,  207,  219,  220;  Weininger's  Sex  and  Character, 
18/.;  T.  Schroeder  on  Religion  and  Sensualism  as  Con- 
nected by  Clergymen  in  the  American  Journal  of  Religious 


Notes  169 

Psychology  and  Education,  Vol.  III.,   16-28;  Powell's 
Christian  Science,  Ch.  VIII. 

Professor  William  James,  in  The  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience,  10-12,  points  out  that  the  relationship 
between  religion  and  sex  is  perhaps  exaggerated  by 
some  writers,  but  that  there  is  substantial  ground  for 
the  general  apprehension  may  well  give  pause  to  the 
foolish  or  the  sentimental  or  the  immature  who  would 
establish  the  Emmanuel  clinic. 

12.  Powell's  Family  Prayers  (George  W.  Jacobs  & 
Co.,  Philadelphia). 

13.  Psychotherapy,  published  by  the  Centre  Pub- 
lishing Company  of  New  York  under  the  editorship  of 
Mr.  W.  B.  Parker,  is  the  first  serious  effort  made  to 
furnish  a  monthly  course  of  reading  in  sound  psy- 
chology, sound  medicine,  and  sound  religion  to  those 
everywhere  interested  in  every  form  of  psychotherapy. 

14.  The  author  regrets  that  the  management  of  a 
highly  organized  parish  in  which  there  are  many 
activities  makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  answer  the 
hundreds  of  letters,  most  of  which  do  not  enclose  a 
stamped  and  addressed  envelope,  which  the  new  work 
brings  to  him,  or  to  accept  as  patients  one  tenth  of 
those  who  have  made  application.  As  time  passes  he 
expects  more  and  more  to  reduce  the  work  to  an  in- 
formal character,  and  after  the  appearance  of  this 
book  containing  the  results  of  his  first  year's  ex- 
perience he  will  naturally  feel  no  responsibility  to 
answer  any  letter  except  the  occasional  one  from 
clergyman  or  doctor  who  may  have  special  claims 
upon  Emmanuel  workers.  Practically  every  question 
which  has  been  asked  him  is  answered  in  this  book, 
and  since  physicians  in  increasing  numbers  are  re- 
questing his  assistance  he  can  not  of  course  find  time 
for  cases  that  come  on  their  own  responsibility. 

15.  Religion  and  Medicine,  213,  214. 


1 70  Notes 

x6.  No  two  Emmanuel  workers  give  suggestions  in 
exactly  the  same  way.  The  following,  which  has 
recently  been  given  to  a  psychasthenic  whose  mind 
was  in  a  turmoil  of  anxiety,  will  illustrate  the  author's 
method.  After  I  was  satisfied  the  patient  was  ready 
for  my  words  I  thus  began  in  a  low  soothing  tone: 

"I  want  you  first  of  all  to  let  these  words  of  Scripture 
sink  into  your  mind.  They  will  make  you  ready  for  the 
more  direct  suggestions  I  shall  give: 

'The  Lord  will  give  strength  unto  his  people;  the 
Lord  will  bless  his  people  with  peace.' 

'  Peace,  peace  to  him  that  is  far  off,  and  to  him  that 
is  near,  saith  the  Lord.* 

'He  maketh  peace  in  thy  borders,  and  fillest  thee 
with  the  finest  of  wheat.' 

'Great  peace  have  they  which  love  thy  law;  and 
nothing  shall  offend  them.' 

'The  kingdom  of  God  is  not  meat  and  drink;  but 
righteousness  and  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost.' 

'  Let  us  therefore  follow  after  things  which  make  for 
peace,  and  things  wherewith  one  may  edify  another. ' 

'Thou  wilt  keep  him  in  perfect  peace,  whose  mind 
is  stayed  on  thee;  because  he  trusteth  in  thee.' 

'Mark  the  perfect  man,  and  behold  the  upright; 
for  the  end  of  that  man  is  peace.' 

'These  things  I  have  spoken  unto  you,  that  in  me 
ye  might  have  peace.  In  the  world  ye  shall  have 
tribulation:  but  be  of  good  cheer;  I  have  overcome  the 
world.' 

'And  the  peace  of  God,  which  passeth  all  under- 
standing, shall  keep  your  hearts  and  minds  through 
Christ  Jesus.' 

"Your  mind  is  full  of  turmoil  and  distress  because 
you  have  not  rested  in  the  peace  of  Jesus.  In  this 
quiet  hour  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Church  you  are 
to  let  go  your  anxiety  and  to  make  room  in  your  mind 


Notes  tfri 


for  the  peace  of  Jesus  which  the  world  can  neither 
give  nor  take  away. 

"The  peace  of  Jesus.  Superficially  there  seemed  to 
be  no  place  in  Jesus'  life  for  peace.  No  man  ever  lived 
who  had  more  things  to  do.  '  I  must  work  the  works 
of  Him  who  sent  me  while  it  is  yet  day,'  he  once  re- 
marked; 'the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work.' 

"You,  too,  have  been  busy;  but  there  have  been  no 
purpose  and  no  organising  principle  in  your  busy  days. 

'  But  so  many  books  thou  readest, 
But  so  many  schemes  thou  breedest, 
But  so  many  wishes  feedest, 
That  thy  poor  head  almost  turns.' 

"It  was  never  so  with  Jesus.  No  circumstance 
could  ever  drag  Him  down  from  His  serenity.  No 
anxiety  could  turn  Him  from  the  path  of  peace.  He 
was  always  busy,  but  as  you  look  upon  His  life  there  is 
no  sign  of  stress  or  strain  in  it. 

"He  had  three  things  which  must  be  yours,  also, 
if  you  would  have  the  peace  of  mind  you  crave : 

"  i.  Faith.  Nothing  ever  shook  His  faith  in  God  or 
man.  Every  attack  upon  His  faith  but  strengthened  it. 
He  walked  by  faith  whenever  sight  failed  Him,  and 
the  lesson  of  His  life  for  you  is  this: 

'It  is  better  to  walk  in  the  dark  with  God 
Than  walk  alone  in  the  light.' 

"2.  Purpose.  Jesus  left  nothing  to  impulse.  He 
had  an  end  in  life  and  He  was  ever  moving  toward  it. 
Nothing  ever  turned  Him  from  it.  He  had  a  work  to 
do  and  he  was  ever  saying  to  Himself:  'How  am  I 
straitened  till  it  be  accomplished.'  Fix  your  eye  on 
Jesus.  Make  His  purpose  yours,  and  He  will  'guide 
your  feet  into  the  way  of  peace.' 

"3.  The  consecrated  will.  The  consecrated  will  is 
the  surrendered  will.     This  is  what  Jesus  meant  when 


172  Notes 

He  remarked  to  his  disciples :  '  My  meat  is  to  do  the 
will  of  him  that  sent  me,  and  to  finish  his  work.'  Make 
the  will  of  Jesus  yours.  Have  done  forever  with  your 
self-centredness  and  self-assertiveness.  Find  peace 
for  your  soul  amid  your  cares  and  worries  by  giving 
up  your  will  to  God.  It  is  through  the  surrendered 
will  that  you  will  find  the  peace  of  God. 

1  Peace,  perfect  peace,  by  thronging  duties  pressed  ? 
To  do  the  will  of  Jesus,  this  is  rest.' 

"Swing  open  wide  the  windows  of  your  soul  to  the 
incoming  of  these  thoughts  and  your  anxieties  will 
disappear.  Wait  now  for  a  few  minutes,  and  as  you 
wait  pray  God  to  take  all  your  anxieties  away.  Wait 
and  trust  and  pray. 

"Now  they  are  gone  and  peace,  perfect  peace,  has 
come  to  take  their  place.  Keep  what  you  have  here 
found.  Go  through  your  daily  rounds  with  peace  at 
the  centre  of  your  mind.  You  can  keep  it  if  you  will 
to  keep  it,  and  continually  seek  God's  help  in  keeping  it. 
Will  now  to  keep  it,  and  at  the  same  time  let  your 
spirit  rise  with  mine  in  these  peace- bringing  prayers: 

' ' '  Almighty  and  everlasting  God,  who  art  always  more 
ready  to  hear  than  we  to  pray,  and  art  wont  to  give  more 
than  either  we  desire  or  deserve:  Pour  down  upon  us  the 
abundance  of  thy  mercy;  forgivingus  those  things  where- 
of our  conscience  is  afraid,  and  givingusthose  good  things 
which  we  are  not  worthy  to  ask,  but  through  the  merits 
and  mediation  of  Jesus  Christ,  thy  Son,  our  Lord.  Amen. ' 

"'0  God,  from  whom  all  holy  desires,  all  good  coun- 
sels, and  all  just  works  do  proceed;  Give  unto  thy 
servants  that  peace  which  the  world  cannot  give; 
that  our  hearts  may  be  set  to  obey  thy  commandments, 
and  also  that  by  thee,  we,  being  defended  from  all  fear, 
may  pass  our  time  in  rest  and  quietness;  through  the 
merits  of  Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour.     Amen.' 


Notes  173 

"  'Sustain  us,  O  Lord,  all  the  day  long  of  this  mortal 
life,  until  the  shadows  lengthen,  and  the  evening  comes, 
and  the  busy  world  is  hushed,  and  life's  fever  is  over. 
Then  in  thy  love  and  mercy  grant  us,  we  beseech  thee, 
a  safe  lodging,  a  holy  rest  and  peace  at  last;  through 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.     Amen.' 

'"Unto  God's  gracious  mercy  and  protection  I  com- 
mit thee.  The  Lord  bless  thee,  and  keep  thee.  The 
Lord  make  his  face  to  shine  upon  thee,  and  be  gracious 
unto  thee.  The  Lord  lift  up  his  countenance  upon  thee, 
and  give  thee  peace,  both  now  and  evermore.    Amen.'  " 

In  my  volume  on  The  Art  of  Natural  Sleep,  63,  I 
promised  in  the  next  book  I  should  write  to  give  a 
series  of  suggestive  treatments  for  the  help  of  those 
who  may  want  to  start  Emmanuel  clinics,  but  know  not 
just  what  type  of  suggestive  treatment  has  elsewhere 
proved  useful.  But  as  the  months  have  passed  and  I 
have  realised  the  possibility  of  using  the  same  type  of 
sermon,  abridged,  which  one  would  use  in  the  pulpit, 
adding  to  it  specific  suggestions  directed  toward  special 
ills,  the  publication  of  a  series  has  appeared  unneces- 
sary. For  the  largest  purpose  of  the  Emmanuel  move- 
ment, as  every  Emmanuel  worker  realises,  is  preventive 
therapeutics,  which  The  Springfield  Republican  evi- 
dently had  in  mind  when  it  published  the  following: 

"The  argument  in  favour  of  ministers  engaging  in 
what  is  called  psychotherapy  is  that  the  cause  of 
sleeplessness  and  other  distressing  ailments  is  some 
moral  defect,  and  that  this  comes  directly  within  the 
scope  of  the  minister's  work.  Very  good,  observes  the 
Christian  Register.  Let  the  minister  then  with  all  his 
might  and  main  address  himself  to  the  cause  of  moral 
training,  moral  improvement,  and  moral  reform  among 
the  men,  women,  and  children  who  have  chosen  him  to 
be  their  spiritual  leader.  It  follows,  as  the  night  the 
day,  that,  if  physical  ills  are  the  result  of  moral  de- 


174  Notes 

Hnquencies,  proper  stimulus  being  applied  to  the  moral 
nature,  the  physical  ills  will  subside.  That  has  always 
been  the  successful  method  of  our  most  honoured 
leaders,  whether  they  were  ministers,  or  fathers, 
mothers,  teachers,  and  in  other  ways  helpers  of  their 
fellow-men.  A  good  minister  will  have  his  hands  full 
if  he  attends  to  the  moral  causes  and  lets  the  physical 
symptoms  attend  to  themselves." 

Several  of  the  illustrations  for  Ch.  V  were  obtained 
from  Grasset's  important  book. 

1 7 .  Saleeby 's  Health,  Strength,  and  Happiness,  Ch.  X. 

18.  October,  1908. 

19.  The  Quest  for  Health  and  Happiness,  31-40. 

20.  Tuckey,  94. 

si.     Tuckey,  243;  Hawkins,  39. 

23.  Powell's  Six  Sermons  on  Sin. 

24.  American  Magazine,  December,  1908,  201.  See 
also  Note  8. 

25.  Hawkins,  35.  It  ought  perhaps  to  be  added 
that  Dr.  Worcester  no  longer  finds  hypnosis  necessary 
in  the  treatment  of  many  alcoholic  cases. 

26.  It  may  be  said  that  with  such  cases  every 
minister  has  now  and  then  to  deal.  The  point  is 
that  the  Emmanuel  movement  greatly  multiplies 
their  number  and  makes  systematic  and  scientific 
what  before  has  been  irregular  and  casual  in  their 
treatment.  The  author  hopes  the  reader  will  bear 
in  mind  the  possibility  that  in  some  instances  patient* 
may  have  unintentionally  overestimated  or  under- 
estimated either  their  symptoms  or  their  improve- 
ment or  that  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world  he 
may,  in  spite  of  the  careful  notes  he  has  kept  of  every 
case,  have  misunderstood  their  statements.  He  wishes 
credit  for  having  taken  comparatively  few  cases  and 
for  leaving  nothing  undone  to  help  them  and  to  ensure 
scientific  accuracy  in  his  reports. 


Notes  175 

And  as  for  the  claim  that  there  is  nothing  new  in 
it  the  following  words  of  Dr.  Cabot  in  Psychotherapy, 
Vol.  I.,  p.  11,  would  seem  to  be  in  point:  "Now,  if 
you  speak  to  the  man  in  the  street  about  mind  cure 
.  .  .  and  especially  if  that  man  .  .  .  happens  to 
be  a  doctor,  he  will  tell  you  that  there  is  nothing 
new  about  this — that  all  sensible  physicians  have 
been  doing  work  of  this  kind  since  the  world  began; 
in  fact,  that  no  doctor  could  even  succeed  in  his 
practice  if  he  did  not  take  account  of  the  mental 
and  moral  conditions  that  complicate  illness  in  such  a 
large  number  of  cases.  There  is  truth  in  this,  about 
the  same  amount  of  truth  that  there  is  in  the  often- 
quoted  statement  that  'There  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun.'  When  a  man  writes  an  original  and  beautiful 
poem,  he  does  nothing,  it  may  be  said,  but  combine 
elements  that  have  existed  for  many,  many  years; 
he  makes  a  new  combination  of  old  words,  that  is 
all. 

"  So  with  American  psychotherapy.  All  its  elements 
are  familiar  and  have  been  used  by  doctors,  social 
workers,  educators,  missionaries,  and  plain  citizens 
of  many  kinds.  What  is  new  about  the  thing  is  the 
particular  combination  of  elements  that  enter  into 
it  and  the  particular  spirit  out  of  which  it  issues." 

If  this  truth,  which  Dr.  Cabot  so  authoritatively 
states,  were  clearly  understood  by  ministers  and 
physicians  generally,  most  of  the  criticism  of  the 
Emmanuel  movement  would  be  withheld.  Those  who 
understand  from  personal  experience  the  purpose  and 
the  spirit  which  lie  back  of  the  Emmanuel  methods, 
and  the  largeness  and  complexity  of  the  problem  with 
which  the  Emmanuel  worker  has  to  deal,  require  no 
answer  to  criticism  and  are  well  content  to  wait  for 
that  widening  of  accurate  information  which  will  in 
time  remove  many  of  the  objections  that  now  arise  in 


1 76  Notes 


minds  which  have  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  work. 

27.  Barton's  The  Missionary  and  His  Critic,  43, 
197,  139,  141,  135. 

28.  American  Magazine,  September,  1908. 

29.  James's  The  Will  to  Believe,  62. 

30.  Quoted  in  S.  Weir  Mitchell's  Treatment,  etc., 
14. 

The  word  "cure,"  like  many  other  words  in  medicine 
and  religion,  is  a  relative  term.  Says  Dr.  James  G. 
Mumford  in  Publi cation  No.  7,  p.  12,  of  The  Religion 
and  Medicine  series  published  by  Moffat,  Yard  & 
Company:  "I  protest  that  a  cure  consists  only  in 
returning  a  man  to  that  state  of  physical  and  mental 
health  which  shall  enable  him  to  live  his  life,  to  ac- 
complish his  wonted  work,  to  adapt  himself  to  his 
environment  in  vigour  of  body,  and  in  freedom  from 
pain;  with  his  mind  unclouded,  buoyant,  assertive. 
...  A  more  common  and  reasonable  condition 
of  cure  is  a  state  of  relative  comfort  and  efficiency; 
with  little  pain  and  distress;  with  infrequent  anxiety; 
with  renewed  if  imperfect  confidence  in  the  bodily 
powers." 

Judged  by  the  standard  set  up  in  the  latter  sen- 
tence, the  Emmanuel  statistics  are  of  more  significance 
than  they  casually  appear,  and  occasional  relapses  no 
more  qualify  them  than  they  qualify  the  statistics  of 
the  best  neurologists. 

31.  Psychotherapy,  Vol.  I.,  No.  2,  p.  4. 

32.  The  Connecticut  Churchman,  December  19, 
1908.  In  unexpected  confirmation  of  the  author's 
general  position  as  stated  in  Ch.  VIII.  there  appears 
in  Current  Literature  for  February  the  abstract  of  an 
important  article  in  Van  Norden's  Magazine  by 
Michael  Williams,  and  Feb.  9,  1909,  Professor  F.  G. 
Peabody  remarked  at  the  Religious  Education  Asso- 
ciation in  Chicago,  "  Religion,  like  all  other  interests 


Notes  177 

of  civilisation,  must  submit  itself  to  the  test  of  social 
utility. " 

Only  those  who  have  by  exhaustive  study  of  the 
Christian  Science  literature  pierced  through  the 
curious  terminology  of  Christian  Science  to  the  thought 
which  it  frequently  conceals,  appreciate  the  adapta- 
bility of  Christian  Science,  in  the  hands  of  clever 
and  alert  leaders,  to  contemporary  uses.  One  il- 
lustration will  suffice.  Most  people  who  smile  at 
"absent  treatment"  will  be  perhaps  surprised  at  the 
following  effort,  in  The  Springfield  Republican,  Jan- 
uary 13,  1908,  of  the  Christian  Science  Bureau  of 
Publicity  to  identify  "absent  treatment"  with  con- 
ventional Christian  prayer  for  those  away  from  church 
or  home. 

"To  the  Editor  of  The  Republican: 

"  In  your  issue  of  the  5th  you  quoted  from  Rev. 
J.  J.  Billingsley  in  the  New  York  Christian  Advocate, 
the  following  statement:  'Socrates  was  ecstatic  in 
various  hallucinations,  believed  in  the  guidance  and 
help  of  "his  familiar  demon,"  and,  like  the  psycho- 
pathic and  befuddled  Mrs.  Eddy  and  her  coadjutors, 
believed  in  the  power  of  "absent  treatment."'  If 
the  happy  thought  had  occurred  to  the  gentleman 
he  might  have  made  his  declaration  still  more  sweep- 
ing. He  might  have  said  that  the  Master  of  Christianity 
believed  in  the  power  of  absent  treatment.  For 
example,  he  healed  the  servant  of  the  centurion  by 
absent  treatment.  Furthermore,  it  might  be  added 
here  that  all  the  Christians  of  the  world  believe  in 
the  efficacy  of  prayer  for  those  who  are  absent  from 
them.  I  well  remember  that  the  good  pastor  of  the 
church  in  which  I  was  reared  always  prayed  for  the 
absent  members.  The  devoted  mother  prays  for 
her    absent    boy.     When   we    come    to   think   of   it, 


178  Notes 

there  are  a  great  many    'befuddled'   folks  in  this 
world. 

"  Alfred  Parlow. 
"Boston,  January  6,  1909." 

In  further  fulfilment  of  the  author's  prediction  in 
the  closing  sentence  of  Chapter  VIII  a  book  has  re- 
cently appeared  entitled  Christian  Science:  Theory  and 
Practice,  by  Roger  Starcross,  of  which  The  Congrega- 
tionalist  remarks:  "It  accepts  the  principles  empha- 
sised by  the  Emmanuel  Movement,  speaks  a  good  word 
for  physicians  and  surgeons,  even  eulogising  medical 
missions,  and  emphasising  the  value  of  fresh  air,  good 
food,  hopefulness,  and  prayer.  There  is  no  foolish 
denial  of  sickness,  disease  or  pain.  In  fact  this  is  so 
far  removed  from  the  ordinary  representation  of 
Christian  Science  that  we  wonder  if  it  is  really  accep- 
table to  Mrs.  Eddy  and  her  satellites.  If  it  is,  it  marks 
a  complete  revolution  in  their  teachings.' ' 

No  more  convincing  evidence  of  the  purpose  of  the 
founders  of  the  Emmanuel  movement  to  defer  to  the 
doctors  at  every  point  could  be  furnished  than  is 
offered  in  the  following  statement  issued  early  in 
February,  1909,  as  this  book  goes  through  the  press: 

"To  bring  the  physician  and  minister  into  closer 
co-operation  and  sympathy,  the  clergy  at  the  head  of 
the  movement  have,  at  the  suggestion  of  an  advisory 
board  of  some  of  the  most  prominent  medical  men 
of  Boston,  designed  a  set  of  rules  to  govern  the  work. 

"The  board  of  physicians,  all  of  them  in  complete 
sympathy  with  the  movement,  consists  of  Drs.  Joel 
E.  Goldthwait,  Richard  C.  Cabot,  James  G.  Mumford, 
and  Joseph  H.  Pratt. 

"  They  have  signed  the  following  statement  affirming 
their  belief  in  the  soundness  of  the  Emmanuel  move- 
ment and  suggesting  the  methods  by  which  clergy 
and  physician  may  work  in  closer  harmony: 


Notes  179 

"  In  order  to  preserve  and  extend  the  co-operation 
of  the  physicians  and  ministers  the  following  rules 
have  recently  been  adopted  by  the  Emmanuel  clergy: 

"  1 — No  person  shall  be  received  for  treatment  unless 
with  the  approval  of  and  after  having  been  thoroughly 
examined  by  his  family  physician,  whose  report  of  the 
examination  shall  be  filed  with  the  minister's  records. 

"2 — No  patients  shall  be  referred  for  diagnosis  or 
treatment  to  any  specialist  or  assistant  save  with  the 
advice  and  consent  of  the  patient's  own  physician. 

"3 — All  patients  who  are  not  under  the  care  of  a  phy- 
sician must  choose  one  and  put  himself  in  his  care  before 
they  can  receive  instruction  at  Emmanuel  Church. 
To  those  who  ask  for  advice  in  this  choice  there  shall 
be  handed  a  printed  alphabetical  list  of  all  the  general 
practitioners  (internists)  attached  to  the  visiting  and 
out-patient  staffs  of  the  Boston  City  Hospital,  the 
Carney  Hospital,  the  Homeopathic  Hospital  and  the 
Massachusetts  General  Hospital. 

"  From  this  (or  from  any  other  source  if  the  patient 
prefers)  a  physician  is  to  be  selected.  Should  these 
physicians  decide  that  none  of  the  patients  thus  re- 
ferred to  them  ought  to  receive  treatment  at  Em- 
manuel Church,  none  will  be  treated  there. 

"Through  the  operation  of  rules  1,2,  and  3,  it  will 
be  seen  that  an  internist  remains  throughout  in  general 
charge  of  every  case. 

"  It  thus  rests  wholly  with  the  physicians  of  this 
community  and  not  with  the  Emmanuel  clergy  to  decide 
whether  or  not  a  patient  should  be  referred  to  a  neu- 
rologist or  other  specialist,  and  which  patients,  if  any, 
are  suitable  for  treatment  by  moral  and  religious  re- 
education at  Emmanuel. 

"  We  believe  that  under  these  rules  the  fundamental 
object  of  the  movement  deserves  the  support  of  all 
physicians  and  Qi  th§  cornrnunity  generally."- 


SOME  BOOKS  TO  READ 

Scarcely  a  day  passes  that  the  author  does 
not  receive  inquiries  as  to  the  best  books  to 
read  upon  Psychotherapy  in  general  and  the 
Emmanuel  movement  in  particular.  Assuming 
that  many  are  reading  the  articles  in  The 
Ladies'  Home  Journal,  Good  Housekeeping, 
American  Magazine,  Current  Literature,  and  The 
Congregationalist,  the  author  will  mention  only 
those  books  which  he  is  constantly  recommend- 
ing to  people  who  come  for  counsel  or  treatment 
and  which  he  knows  both  from  observation  and 
experience  are  of  practical  service.  Most  of  the 
books  have  been  made  accessible  to  my  patients 
through  the  courtesy  of  Mr.  W.  P.  Cutter,  who 
has  established  in  St.  John's  Parish  House  a 
branch  of  the  Forbes  Library.     On 

PSYCHOTHERAPY  IN  GENERAL 

Bramwell,  J.    Milne.    Hypnotism.     London, 

1906. 
Cutten,  G.  B.     The  Psychological  Phenomena 

of   Christianity.     New   York,    1908. 
181 


1 82    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Dercum,  Francis  X.  Rest,  Mental  Thera- 
peutics, Suggestion.     Philadelphia,  1903. 

Dubois,  Paul.  The  Psychic  Treatment  of  Ner- 
vous Disorders.     New  York,  1906. 

The  Influence  of  the  Mind  on  the  Body. 

New  York,  1906. 

Forel,  August.  Hypnotism  or  Suggestion  and 
Psychotherapy.     New  York,   1907. 

Moll,  Albert.    Hypnotism.     London,  1890. 

Munro,  Henry  S.  Suggestive  Therapeutics. 
St.  Louis,  1907. 

Psychotherapy-r-A  Course  of  Reading  appearing 
in  monthly  sections.     New  York. 

Schofield  Alfred  T.  Nerves  in  Order.  New 
York,  1907. 

Nerves  in  Disorder.     New  York,  1903. 

The  Unconscious  Mind.     New  York. 

Tuckey,  C.  Lloyd.  Treatment  by  Hypnotism 
and  Suggestion.     New  York,  1907. 

THE  EMMANUEL  MOVEMENT 

Achorn,  J.  W.  Some  Physical  Disorders  having 
a  Mental  Origin.  Religion  and  Medicine 
Publications.    No.  4. 

Baker,  Ray  Stannard.  New  Ideals  in  Healing. 
New  York,  1909. 

Cabot,  Richard  C.  Psychotherapy  in  its  Re- 
lation to  Religion.     No.  5.     See  Achorn. 

Coriat,  Isador  H.  Some  Familiar  Forms  of 
Nervousness.     No.  6.     See  Achorn. 


Some  Books  to  Read        183 

Good  Housekeeping.       Happiness    and  Health. 

Springfield,  1908. 
James,  William.     The  Energies  of  Man.    No.  3. 

See  Achorn. 
Macomber,    Wm.    History   of    the   Emmanuel 

Movement  from  the  Standpoint  of  a  Patient. 

No.  2.     See  Achorn. 
McComb,  Samuel.     The  Healing  Ministry  of  the 

Church.    No.  1.     See  Achorn. 
Mumford,    James    G.    Some    End-Results    of 

Surgery.     No.  7.    See  Achorn. 
Powell,    Lyman    P.     Christian    Science,    Ch. 

VII.     New  York,    1907. 
The    Art    of    Natural    Sleep.     New 

York,  1908. 
Worcester,  Elwood.    The  Living  Word.    New 

York,  1908. 
Worcester,  Elwood    (and  Samuel  McComb 

and    Isador    H.    Coriat).    Religion    and 

Medicine.     New  York,  1908. 

NERVOUS  TROUBLES 

A  Letter  of  Hope.     New  York,  1908. 

Bishop,    Emily    M.    Seventy    Years    Young. 

New  York,  1907. 
Brackett,  Anna  C.     The  Technique  of  Rest. 

New  York,  1898. 
Brown,    C.   R.     The  Gospel  of  Good  Health. 

Boston,  1908. 


184    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Call,  Annie  Payson.     The  Freedom  of  Life. 

Boston,  1905. 

Power  through  Repose.    Boston,  1893. 

The  Heart  of  Good  Health.     Boston, 

1908. 
Churchill,  Lida  A.     The  Magic  Seven.     New 

York,  1 90 1. 
Dresser,    Horatio   W.     A    Physician   to   the 

Soul.     New  York,  1908. 
The  Philosophy  of  the  Spirit.      New 

York,  1908. 
Health  and  the  Inner  Life.    New  York, 


1906. 
Fallows,  Samuel.     Health,  Strength,  and  Hap- 
piness.    Chicago,  1908. 
Fiske,  Charles  Ransom.     Man  Building.   New 

York,  1 90 1. 
Fletcher,     Horace.      Happiness.      Chicago, 

1897. 

Menticultftre.     Chicago,  1895. 

Flint,    George   Elliott.    Power  and  Health 

through  Progressive  Exercise.     New  York, 

1905. 
Grasset,    Joseph.     The  Semi-Insane  and   the 

Semi-Responsible.     New  York,  1908. 
Hawkins,  Chauncey  J.     The  Quest  for  Health 

and  Happiness.     Boston,  1908. 
Hilty,  Carl.     Happiness.     New  York,  1903. 
Jordan,  Wm.  George.     The  Kingship  of  Self- 

Control.     New  York,   1899. 


Some  Books  to  Read         185 

Kirkham,  Stanton  Davis.  The  Philosophy  of 
Self -Help.     New  York,  1909. 

Leland,  Charles  Godfrey.  Have  You  a  Strong 
Will?    London,  1899. 

Mitchell,  S.  Weir.  Doctor  and  Patient.  Phila- 
delphia, 1904. 

Newcomb,  Charles  B.  Principles  of  Psychic 
Philosophy.     Boston,  1908. 

Noble,  Emily.  Rhythmic  Breathing  plus  Ol- 
factory Nerve  Influence  on  Respiration. 
Boston,  1908. 

Park,  John  Edgar.  The  Keen  Joy  of  Living. 
Boston,  1908 

Patterson,  George  Brodie.  The  Will  to  Be 
Well.     New  York.  1907. 

Powell,  Lyman  P.  The  Art  of  Natural  Sleep. 
New  York,  1908. 

Richards,  Ellen  H.  The  Art  of  Right  Living. 
Boston,  1904. 

Saleeby,  C.  W.  Health,  Strength,  and  Happi- 
ness.    New  York,  1908. 

Worry,  New  York,  1907 

Sanford,  Alexander  E.  Pastoral  Medicine. 
New  York,  1905. 

Sherman,  H.  R.  The  Power  of  the  Will.  Bos- 
ton, 1894. 

Stimson,  Henry  A.  The  Right  Life.  New 
York,  1905. 

Trine,  Ralph  Waldo.  What  all  the  World  's 
a-Seeking.     Boston. 


1 86    The  Emmanuel  Movement 

Trine,  Ralph  Waldo.  In  Tune  with  the  Infin- 
ite.    Boston. 

Every  Living  Creature.     Boston. 

Upson,  Henry  S.  Insomnia  and  Nerve  Strain. 
New  York,  1908. 

Walton,  George  L.  Why  Worry?  Phila- 
delphia, 1908. 

Wood,  Henry.  The  New  Old  Healing.  Boston, 
1908. 

The  New   Thought  Simplified.     New 

York,  1907. 

THE  INNER  LIFE 

Babcock,  Maltbie  D.     Thoughts  for  Every-Day 

Living.     New  York,  1901. 
Brent,  C.  H.     With  God  in  Prayer.     Philadel- 
phia, 1907. 
Buckham,  John    W.     Whence    Cometh   Help? 

Boston,  1908. 
Bunyan,  John.     The  Pilgrim's  Progress.     New 

York,  1 89 1. 
Drummond,  Henry.     The  Greatest  Thing  in  the 

World.     New  York. 
Fuller,  Thomas.    Good  Thoughts  in  Bad  Times. 

Boston,  1866. 
Gannett  and  Jones.    The  Faith  That  Makes 

Faithful.     New  York,  1905. 
Griggs,   E.   H.     The  Ethics  of  Personal  Life. 

New  York,  1908. 
Goulburn,  Edward  M.     Thoughts  on  Personal 

Religion.     New  York,  1866. 


Some  Books  to  Read        187 

Havergal,  Frances  Ridley.  My  King  and 
His  Service.     Philadelphia,   1892. 

Lawrence,  Brother.  The  Practice  of  the 
Presence  of  God.     Boston. 

Lindsay,  Anna  Robertson  Brown.  What  is 
Worth  While?    New  York,  1893. 

The    Victory    of    Our    Faith.     New 

York,  1894. 

Miller,  J.  R.     The  Inner  Life.     New  York. 

Silent  Times.     New  York. 

In  Perfect  Peace.     New  York. 

The  Face  of  the  Master.     New  York. 

Phelps,  Austin.  The  Still  Hour.  Boston, 
i860. 

Powell,  Lyman  P.  Family  Prayers.  Phila- 
delphia, 1905. 

Six  Sermons  on  Sin.     Philadelphia, 

1903. 

St.  Francis  of  Sales.  The  Devout  Life. 
London,  1887. 

Soulsby,  Lucy  H.  M.  Suggestions  on  Prayer. 
New  York,  1902. 

Taylor,  Jeremy.     Holy  Living.     London,  1885. 

Trumbull,  H.  C.     Prayer.     Philadelphia,  1896. 


INDEX 

A 

Alcoholism,  Ch.  VI 

Ambrose,  i 

American  Magazine,  120,  181 

Amherst  College,  36 

Arques,  151 

Art  of  Natural  Sleep,  69,  77 

Aschaffenburg,  106 

Auto- Suggestion,  78 

Aversions,  135 

B 

Babcock,  M.  D.,  76 

Baker,  Ray  Stannard,  29,  120,  182 

Bangs,  J.  K.,  86 

Barker,  Dr.  L.  F.,  2 

Beard,  Dr.,  53 

Beauchamp,  Miss,  89 

Beethoven,  98 

Behring,  2 

Beside  the  Bonnie  Briar  Bush,  33 

Binet,  89 

Bordet,  2 

Bourget,  Paul,  51 

Bramwell,  89,  114 

Brent,  Bishop,  76 

Bridgman,  Dr.  H.  A.,  xi 

Buckley,  Dr.  J.  M.,  80 


Cable,  G.  W.,  16 

Cabot,  Dr.  Richard  C,  7,  54,  57,  61,  62,  73,  82,  125, 
178,  182, 

189 


i9o  Index 


Cato,  23 

Century  Magazine,  80 

Charcot,  113 

Charmides,  154 

Christ,  the  healing,  1,  15 

Christian  Science,  33,  ill,  144,  164,  184 

Chrysostom,  1 

Chulalongkorn,  149 

Church,  the,  and  the  Emmanuel  movement,  Ch.  VIII 

Clark  University,  156 

Class,  the  Emmanuel,  10  ff 

Clinic,  the  Emmanuel,  11  ff 

Cocainism,  133 

Coleridge,  107 

Comte,  Auguste,  95 

Confessional,  the,  168 

Congregationalist,  The,  181 

Connecticut,  the  Bishop  of,  164 

Coriat,  Dr.  I.  H.,  7,  83 

Cornell  University,  156 

Crillon,  151 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  96 

Current  Literature,  181 

Cutter,  W.  P.,  181 


Darwin,  Charles,  10 1 

Delitzsches,  the  two,  4 

Dipsomania,  108  ff 

Doctor,  the,  and  the  Emmanuel  worker,  viii,  22,  140 

Dresser,  H.  W.,  77,  146 

Drugs,  in  neurasthenia,  58 

Drummond,  Henry,  76 

Dubois,  Paul,  2,  42,  76,  77 


Eddy,  Mrs.,  145 
Ehrlich,  2 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  97 
Europe,  suggestion  in,  156 

P 

Family  Prayers,  Powell's,  75 


Index        *  191 


Farlow,  Alfred,  178 
Fechner,  4,  96,  167 
Forbes  Library,  181 
Forel,  89,  113 
Fiirer,  106 


Goldsmith,  Oliver,  105 
Goldthwait,  Dr.  J.  E.,  178 
Good  Housekeeping,  76,  181 
Grief,  135 
Gummidge,  Mrs.,  79 

H 

Hamlet,  95, 

Harrison,  Frederick,  96 

Harvard  University,  36,  156 

Hawkins,  Rev.  Chauncey  J.,  xi,  90,  112,  i: 

Hayem,  2 

Henry  IV,  151 

Hopkins  University,  156 

Hughes,  Governor,  147 

Hypnotism,  104,  120 


Ibsen,  95 

India,  148 

Insomnia  and  Nerve  Strain,  Upson's,  51 

Isaiah,  143 


Ito,  Marquis,  149 
Iyer,  W.  W.  S.,  148 


Jacob,  13 

James,  Professor  W.,  9,  183 

Janet,  83 

Japan,  5,  149 

K 

Keeley  cure,  113 

Khan,  Prince  Malcolm,  143 


192  Index 


Kirkham,  S.  D.,  79 
Kraepelin,  106 
Kurz,  106 


Lambeth  Conference  of  1908,  164 

Ladies'  Home  Journal,  76,  181 

Lawrence,  Brother,  76 

Lead,  Kindly  Light,  3 

Lees,  the,  16 

A  Letter  of  Hope,  68 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  96 

Lindsay,  Anna  Robertson  Brown,  76 

Lloyd,  Dr.  A.  S.,  148 

M 

McCauley,  Terry,  113 

McClure  s  Magazine,  106 

McComb,  Dr.  Samuel,  v,  5,  11 

Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  57,  59,  61 

Materialism,  reaction  from,  144-148 

Metchnikoff,  2,  106 

Milan  Cathedral,  1 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  96 

Miller,  J.  R.,  76 

Minister,  effect  of  Emmanuel  work  on,  159 

Missions,  Christian,  148 

Mitchell,  Dr.  S.  Weir,  4,  9,  11,  53,  59,  60,  61,  72,82,  167 

Morphinism,  133 

Morris,  G.  P.,  xi 

Mott,  J.  R.,  148 

Mumford,  Dr.  J.  G.,  176,  178,  183 

N 

Nervous,  treatment  of  the,  Ch.  IV 
Neurasthenia,  Ch.  IV 
Newman,  J.  H.,  3 
New  Old  Healing,  146 
New  Thought,  vii,  77,  145 
Northampton,  16  ff 


Orlitzky,  114 


Index  193 


Osier,  Dr.  Wm,  33,  54,  59 
Outlook,  The,  7 


Pascal,  95,  103 

Pasteur,  151 

Patterson,  G.  B.,  77 

Pennsylvania,  University  of,  156 

Pensees,  Pascal's,  95 

Perils  of  Emmanuel  work,  157 

Persia,  149 

Peyer's  patches,  146 

Philosophy  of  Self-Help,  Kirkham's,  146 

Physictan  to  the  Soul,  Dresser's,  146 

Play  fair,  Dr.  Wm.,  59 

Potiphar,  Mrs.,  80 

Powell,  Gertrude  Wilson,  xii 

Pratt,  Dr.  J.  H.,  178 

Prince,  Dr.  Morton,  7,  89 

Psychasthenia,  49,  Ch.  V 

Psychic  Treatment  of  Nervous  Disorders,  Dubois's,  77 

Psychotherapy,  xi,  76,  181 


Religion  and  Medicine,  vii,  76 
"Rest  Cure,"  59 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  147 
Roux,  2 
Rudin,  106 


St.  Francis,  76,  96 

St.  John's  Church,  Northampton,  17 

St.  Paul's,  London,  17 

Saleeby,  Dr.  C.  W.,  95,  106 

Saloon,  the,  104 

Salvation  Army,  113 

Schiller,  96 

Schofield,  A.  T.,  77 

Shakespeare,  53,  95 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  105 

Siam,  149 


i94  Index 


Siemerling,  106 

Sleeplessness,  in 

Smith  College,  17 

Smith,  W.  H.,  106 

Social     Service    Department    of    the    Massachusetts 

General  Hospital,  57,  59 
Socrates,  2,  95,  107,  154 
Sollman,  2 
Speer,  R.  E.,  148 
Springfield  Republican,  173,  177 
Statistics,  Ch.  Ill 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  105 
Suggestion,  111 
Surgical  operations,  136 


Tarchanoff,  122 

Tauler,  96 

Tokarsky,  114 

Travels  with  a  Donkey,  Stevenson's,  105 

Treves,  Sir  Frederick,  2 

Trine,  R.  W.,  77 

Tuan  Fong,  149 

Tuckey,  Dr.  Lloyd,  89,  114 

Tufts  College,  156 

Tumours,  138 

Upson,  Dr.,  51,  102 


U 


W 


Wallenstein,  96 

Wiamsky,  114 

Wisconsin,  University  of,  156 

With  God  in  Prayer,  Bishop  Brent's,  76 

Worcester,  Dr.  Elwood,  vii,  3,  135,  169 

Wundt,  4 


Yale  University,  36,  156 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  118 


fi  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Complete  Catalogues  cent 
on  application 


A  marshalling  of  the  evidence  pro  and  con, 
A  summing  up  and  an  impartial  judgment 

Christian  Science 

The  Faith  and  Its  Founder 
By  Rev,  Lyman  P.  Powell 

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The  Art  of  Natural 
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With  Definite  Directions  for  the 
Wholesome  Cure  of  Sleeplessness 

Illustrated  by  Cases  from  Clinics  in  Northampton 
and  Elsewhere 

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Of  all  the  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to,  insomnia  is 
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The  Philosophy  of 
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